Researchers at Iowa State explore the resilience of agriculture supply chains

A new project from Iowa State University will investigate how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted the US food supply chain, with an eye for short- and long-term solutions to prevent future disruptions.  Keri Jacobs, an associate professor of economics at Iowa State, said that the pandemic led to major disruptions in a number of agricultural industries. “These disruptions were unique because we didn’t experience a shock to the supply of agricultural products-it was largely a shock to our processing capacity through reduced labour,” she said. Jacobs noted that the lack of labour was especially problematic in agricultural industries, as the processing capacity and the entire system was built based on the known biological processes for products, like eggs, milk, beef, and pork.  Read more