Differential Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on California’s Produce and Nut Industries
Brittney Goodrich,
Kristin Kiesel and
Ellen Bruno
Western Economics Forum, 2021, vol. 19, issue 01
Abstract:
California consistently leads the U.S. in the value of agricultural commodities produced, specializing in the production of high-value fruit, vegetable, and nut crops. In this article, we outline the short-term, medium-term, and evolving long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on California’s produce and tree nut industries. Many of California’s top commodities are labor intensive and highly perishable, e.g., strawberries and lettuce, and consequently these types of commodities experienced some of the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. These initial impacts included higher production costs due to social distancing and other worker protection measures, and the discarding of millions of dollars’ worth of produce which was intended for the food service sector. Other top commodities, such as almonds and processing tomatoes, have highly mechanized operations with relatively non-perishable products. These have been more resilient to the short-run effects of the pandemic on supply chains but have experienced disruptions in international trade. In this article, we highlight the differential effects of the pandemic on California’s high-value crops across the food service and retail supply chains, discuss the mitigating effects of federal, state and industry support, and highlight emerging consumer trends.
Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; Agricultural and Food Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/311307/files/D ... heCOVID19Produce.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:weecfo:311307
DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.311307
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Western Economics Forum from Western Agricultural Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().