Today, the cost of grocery store meat is increasing at a faster pace.
This has resulted in consumers paying more but farmers still making less money off of it.
So, who’s getting the most benefits at the expense of both consumers & farmers?
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“It’s the meatpackers involved in the center of the supply chain”, according to Drake University Law Professor Jennifer Zwagerman,
“There is sort of this middleman in there that can profit from the demand that’s increasing and yet control what’s paid out to the other side,” said Zwagerman.
So, in light of this, President Biden has decided to step in ease out food costs through supply chain diversification and federal aid.
This includes COVID relief funding of $1 billion dollars to expand meat and poultry processing all over the U.S. States.
In the official statement, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, “It will give farmers the opportunity to have more choices about where they sell their livestock,” said Vilsack. “[That] obviously should result in better farm income.”
He continued by saying, “they’re also working to monitor unfair and deceptive practices with a new initiative to protect whistleblower status and by strengthening a 100-year-old law, the Packers and Stockyards Act, designed to keep meatpackers and processors in check.”
“[We are] making sure that there’s a sufficient understanding and clarity about how that act can be violated and what rights farmers have under the Packers and Stockyards Act,” he said.
“As soon as our supply chain concerns are gone, you would think prices should drop. I don’t think that’s really going to be the case because those in the middle say, ‘Oh, people have been paying this, we’ll keep it where it is,” she said. “But, that again doesn’t get passed on to the producer.”
With covid relief funding in place, Vilsack believes the grocery store prices will moderate over the next few years to come.
