Spartan alumnus bullish on durability of America’s food supply chain despite pandemic

<p>While farmers and food producers struggle with supply and demand issues, consumers are continuing to see rising grocery prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, grocery bills shot up by 2.6% in April, the largest spike since 1974. And those price increases haven't let up. From farm to table COVID-19 has placed added stress on everyone's plate. </p><p>To help us better understand these complex issues, I’m joined by Spartan alumnus <a href="https://twitter.com/bakerdr">Dustin Baker</a>, Class of 2012 from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Today he works as the manager for education and research at <a href="https://www.cihedging.com/">Commodity &amp; Ingredient Hedging, LLC</a> in Chicago. </p><p>“There are really two main drivers of these issues. While they're intertwined, they're really separate from one another. The first one occurred when stay at home orders went into place and people immediately began shifting the way that they consumed products, food included. The second major impact came from the proliferation of COVID cases in meat packing plants around the country. And they're really two separate issues that had differing impacts on different commodities. If we look at the first one, when people were forced to stay at home, businesses, restaurants, and schools shut down. People changed where they were consuming their food and other products. We saw this in toilet paper. When people were stocking up to limit the number of trips to the store. And it was really confusing to some because were people all of a sudden going to be consuming more toilet paper? The answer to that was no, but they were changing where they were consuming that toilet paper.</p><p>“And the same was true for food, where rather than eating outside of the home, people were consuming most if not all of their meals at home. People consume food differently at home than they do away from home. In 2019 about 55 percent of total food expenditures were on meals away from home. We saw a major increase in dema