Ever since COVID-19 arrived in Saskatchewan, many shoppers have found empty shelves when looking for staples like flour or rice at local grocery stores.
While COVID-19 is a major challenge, there’s no need to stock up a doomsday bunkers’ worth of supplies while leaving nothing for our neighbours, said Richard Gray, a professor of agriculture and resource economics at the University of Saskatchewan.
“There is no food security issue, especially if consumers moderate their purchases.”
While it’s understandable for people to be shaken by the events of the last few weeks, Gray said there’s several reasons to have faith in the supply chain keeping us all fed.
1. There’s plenty of food
While processing facilities may have had trouble keeping up with surges in demand, Gray said nothing has affected the availability of the crops and livestock needed for the food supply.
“There’s no less food around than there was three weeks ago, or a month ago.”
What has happened, in effect, is that supplies that would previously have sat in distribution centres are currently piled up in people’s homes, he said.
2. There're plenty of trucks
The entire supply chain relies heavily on trucks to get products where they need to be. Gray said restrictions on many industries and a sharp downturn in oil and gas both mean more trucks are available, along with people to drive them.
“There’s a lot of skilled truckers out there right now.”
3. There’s plenty of labour
Saskatchewan’s supply chain is highly mechanized, so a lack of workers to keep harvests on track and products moving would be next to impossible. While there are pinch points around the processing of meat and fresh vegetables, Gray said other facilities would likely be able to pick up the slack.
4. The chain will catch up
Gray said he expects things to even out eventually. In particular, he said consumer demand will slow down naturally.
“Eventually, people realize their room-and-a-half full of toilet paper is enough, and they’re not going to buy more.”
On top of this, Gray said many suppliers will have clearly heard the market signal to increase production, and will already be looking at ways to bring on additional shifts or give out overtime in order to meet surging demand.
5. If worse comes to worst: there’s lentils
While he stresses there is nothing about COVID-19 that should have anyone worried about actual shortages, as opposed to temporary stocking woes, Gray said Saskatchewan is well-placed to ride out even the most outlandish scenarios, thanks to its highly developed agriculture sector.
“We’ve got some fairly serious pulse processing here,” he said, noting Saskatchewan farmers produce enough peas, lentils and chickpeas to effectively feed everyone in the province indefinitely, not to mention the rest of Canada.
