COVID-19 Clouds Future of Food Processing Sector

The Chief Agricultural Economist with Farm Credit Canada says the COVID-19 crisis is testing the adaptability of Canada's food processing sector. Farm Credit Canada's latest update indicates Canada's food processing outlook has become clouded by uncertainty.

 

FCC's Chief Agricultural Economist J.P. Gervais says, going into the COVID-19 crisis, Canada's food processing sector had been performing well but permanent transformations in the supply chain are resulting in significant changes.

 

 

With this crisis what really clouds the outlook is the shift in consumption. Not knowing when food services are going to resume normal operations, and post crisis is probably going to be different than pre-crisis, there's a lot of unknowns. As that demand shifts, food processors are not supplying the food service businesses the same way that they are going to supply retailers.

 

All different types of specifications are going to be different and so, for processors, it adds quite a bit of complexity to try to anticipate demand going forward. As well, when we get out of the crisis, even if we resume some sort of normalcy when it comes to operations in the food service, are we going to see some consumer’s behavior change? We're seeing some of the changes now, more online purchasing, more cooking at home, more trying to find local products and so forth.

 

All of that could have some sort of lasting implications for food processors. When I said that the outlook was cloudy, I do think that it really is difficult for food processors to anticipate what the future looks like. We rely on a supply chain that's really just in time in terms of the delivery but you need to still plan ahead and those processes are part of the normal operations of food processors. We can't adjust them really fast and so all of that adds quite a bit of complexity for food processing.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.