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A surge in coronavirus cases in one of the country’s top regions for apples and sweet cherries is challenging agricultural operations already limited by rules aimed at preventing such outbreaks, underscoring the difficulty of keeping farmworkers safe, the Wall Street Journal reported. Recent emergency regulations issued by Washington state to curb outbreaks of coronavirus among farmworkers living in temporary housing are slowing fieldwork in Yakima Valley, but the virus is still spreading, according to agricultural employers and the Yakima Health District. On farms that produce $1 billion of apples, sweet cherries and other crops each year, employers are hiring fewer guest workers and delaying their arrival. COVID-19 cases have surged in Yakima County. The county is nine times smaller in population than King County, home of Seattle, but it only has 30 percent fewer cases than its neighbor, with 7,349 coronavirus cases as of June 30. Roughly one-fifth of the cases in Yakima are among agricultural workers, according to the Yakima Health District. In April, cases involving agricultural workers appeared in Yakima’s large fruit warehouses, where hundreds of people pack apples and other produce into boxes. Recently, the virus has spread through employer-provided housing, the health district said. Tens of thousands of seasonal workers from elsewhere in the U.S. and countries like Mexico live in dormitory-style housing, converted motels and military-style tents during Washington’s harvest season. The difficulty of keeping workers healthy in Yakima indicates how hard it has become to safeguard agriculture’s workforce, intensifying questions about how best to prevent outbreaks in labor-intensive workplaces. Growing outbreaks among farmworkers nationwide come as most employers are looking to reduce the threat of outbreaks among their workers and the coronavirus continues to sicken workers at U.S. meatpacking plants.

The world’s dairy farmers are facing an existential crisis as they’ve dumped millions of gallons of milk, slowed output and sold off older cows amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. Global governments stepped in with stimulus cash that provided some much-needed temporary relief, helping benchmark Chicago milk futures to almost double in two months. But once the aid money starts to dry up, many producers will confront tough choices again: suffer through losses, or pack it all in and shut the farm. While lockdown restrictions are easing, slower economic growth means consumers will be cutting back on dining out and even home-delivery orders. That’s a hit the dairy industry won’t be able to sustain. Even with billions in stimulus, the contraction for U.S. herds will likely match record levels this year, according to the National Milk Producers Federation. Declines are also expected in Europe and Australia, two other regions key to global exports. Dairy is one of the world’s most important food markets. The sector accounts for about 14 percent of global agricultural trade and more than 150 million farmers keep at least one milk animal, according to the United Nations. The industry is valued at about $700 billion, but it’s facing a reckoning. For years, milk demand has been on the decline in developed countries. That’s only accelerated recently as more consumers turned to plant alternatives amid climate concerns. When coronavirus lockdowns went into place, dairy markets were among the hardest hit in the food world. It turns out, consumers the world over eat a lot more cheese and butter when they’re dining out than they do at home. As restaurants shuttered, farmers were left with an overwhelming glut. Hundreds of millions of pounds of milk got dumped.

Year-to-year farm bankruptcies increased 23 percent, according to recently released data from U.S. Courts, according to an American Farm Bureau Federation Market Intel report. The data shows a total of 627 filings during the 12-month period ending March 2020, marking five consecutive years of chapter 12 bankruptcy increases, including an accelerated rate since January. Wisconsin was the hardest hit with 78 filings in the 12-month period, followed by Nebraska with 41 chapter 12 filings and Iowa at 37. More than 50 percent of the chapter 12 filings were in the 13-state Midwest region, followed by 19 percent in the Southeast.

Wisconsin farm bankruptcies are on the rise as the effect of coronavirus on the economy pushes already weakened businesses over the edge, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Since Jan. 1, court records show, 36 farmers have filed for chapter 12. By comparison, there were 57 chapter 12 filings in Wisconsin in all of 2019. In the last few years, thousands of dairy farmers have lost money as they've milked cows in an oversupplied market that's depressed prices. Lately, the industry has been devastated by coronavirus shutdowns. About one-third of the state’s dairy products, mostly cheese, is sold in the food-service trade that's seen sales nosedive from the shutdown of restaurants, schools, sporting events, festivals and other markets for dairy products. And it's not just dairy feeling the pain. Corn producers have experienced it through the closure of ethanol plants as demand for the fuel additive has dried up with less consumption of gasoline. Livestock farmers have felt it through trade wars and coronavirus disruptions of export markets. Last fall, Congress more than doubled the allowed debt cap for a chapter 12 filing to make more farmers eligible. Legislators said the higher cap, now set at $10 million, reflects increased land values and bigger farms. "One of the reasons we may see an uptick in chapter 12 filings is it's sometimes easier to get financing approved when a farm is in bankruptcy than when it's not. Outside of bankruptcy, there's usually a lien there, sometimes more than one. In bankruptcy, you can get a court order saying that the crop lender is in first place," said bankruptcy attorney David Krekeler.

Farmers and food companies across the country are throttling back production as the virus creates chaos in the agricultural supply chain, erasing sales to restaurants, hotels and cafeterias despite grocery stores rushing to restock shelves, the Wall Street Journal reported. American producers stuck with vast quantities of food they cannot sell are dumping milk, throwing out chicken-hatching eggs and rendering pork bellies into lard instead of bacon. In part, that is because they can’t easily shift products bound for restaurants into the appropriate sizes, packages and labels necessary for sale at supermarkets. Few in the agricultural industry expect grocery store demand to offset the restaurant market’s steep decline. Farms are plowing under hundreds of acres of vegetables in prime U.S. growing regions like Arizona and Florida. Chicken companies are shrinking their flocks to curb supplies that could weigh on prices for months to come. In the dairy industry, restaurant closures and other disruptions have left producers with at least 10 percent more milk than can be used, according to industry estimates. Dairy groups say that the milk glut could grow as supplies increase to a seasonal peak in the spring, and as shelter-in-place orders stretch on across the country. In response, cooperatives that sell milk from farmers to processors are asking their members to dump milk, cull their herds or stop milking cows early in an effort to curb production.

With milk prices plunging to lows that haven’t been seen in nearly four years, dairy cooperatives are dumping the product to reduce oversupply, Bloomberg News reported. While shoppers are clearing out milk cases at grocery stores, that’s not making up for the closings of restaurants and schools. U.S. cows are entering their most productive time of the year right now as coronavirus is killing off a significant tap for demand. While some dumping usually occurs during the U.S. spring, this year it will be “even more aggressive,” said Alyssa Badger, director of operations at HighGround Dairy in Chicago. “There’s no way to offset how much loss we’re seeing with school closings and food service demand in the form of cheese and butter, just because someone’s buying an extra gallon of milk,” Badger said.” American dairy farmers have been suffering a wave of bankruptcies amid years of low milk prices, and with so many exiting — Wisconsin alone was losing two to three dairy farms a day for the past three years — the industry was just starting a recovery. The onset of the virus has put any such turnaround on hold. Wisconsin dairy farmer Wayne Gajewski hasn’t yet resorted to dumping milk, but supplies are backing up in local markets and prices have fallen below his cost of production. He’s hoping the federal government can buy some dairy products to distribute to those in need, and that the virus clears up soon. “We’re not used to the supply chain breaking down,” said Gajewski. While demand for dairy products initially surged due to consumers stocking up on staples, that has now dropped, said Kristen Coady, a spokeswoman for Dairy Farmers of America. The cooperative is trying “all possible avenues to find a home” for their members’ milk, including donation opportunities at food banks.