In the News: Our Team Contributes to Cornell White Paper on COVID-19 Impacts on Farming
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted individuals, families, communities, and businesses throughout New York state, and continues to do so. In an effort to detail the impact of COVID-19 on selected agricultural sectors, experts from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University have contributed to a series of nine papers.
These papers will help bring “a greater understanding of the effects of immediate and sustained disruptions in the farm and food system on the agricultural economy and assist in highlighting lessons learned to strengthen the food system going forward,” according to Cornell CALS.
The Cornell Small Farms Program contributed a paper on COVID-19’s impact on the livestock industry. The New York livestock industry is poised for growth but constrained by access to slaughterhouses.
Our team noted that the demand for local meat products has skyrocketed since March 2020. Simultaneously, producers’ ability to get their animals processed at a USDA facility has emerged as a bottleneck in the local meat supply chain, resulting in financial losses for farmers and questions about the resiliency of the state’s processing infrastructure.
Read more about New York State food and farming COVID-19 effects on Cornell CALS.
