Transcripts For CSPAN2 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue Discussion On The Food Supply Chain 20240713

Hello everybody and i hope you can hear me. Sonnon the secretary of agricule along with my co moderator and and rated and you are here today to welcome you to this Bipartisan Policy Center food summit. We want to thank you all for being here. We want to thank our guests and especially secretary sonny perdue who we will introduce in a minute. This is become one of the most talked about issues of the whole covid19 issue. It has to relate to the food supply. From the production to the processing to the distributing to the consumption. And how it affects farmers, how it affects processors and how it affects the average person and particularly the hungry. So we are delighted to be here. We can dove into every issue in great depth because of the time. But its a way to start the discussion and we think we will have an interesting time listening to this very important issue about feeding this country. So i would like to again welcome everybody and thank the Bipartisan Policy Center for their hosting of this event and turn it over to my calling secretary and. [applause]. Thank you is always right it is always a pleasure to be with you in so it is my honor today to introduce our first speaker rated 31st secretary of agriculture sonny perdue. Now as secretary, all three of us have faced nine times during her tenure. Ann in my case, included 911 and another. But today, we are facing unprecedented challenges to the food system as the covid19 pandemic has spread around the globe. So we want to say thank you very much mr. Secretary for joining us today to discuss these challenges and how the u. S. D. A. Is responding during this extraordinary time. Thank you very much for being here. Sonny perdue thank you to my former colleague. It is good to be with you. Give you with which i had the honor to serve on the governors counsel. So another work and i appreciate the convening of this topic. Almost like every crisis has its own language if you think about it. And who who thought about Food Supply Chains prior to now. And i guess, more americans are aware and revolve often talked about the fact that in modernday america, and certainly in urban america, the most people think about good really comes from the Grocery Store. With the Food Supply Chain, within the problem and the expectations and understanding exactly what has happened here in america. I am even guilty of not understanding the very dual threat parallel reduction in a processing and logistics and Delivery System that we had in the United States of america. When we think about the context of what we faced, over 50 percent of the food we consume, is being consumed out of the home. We had a production scheme, very efficient synchronized emigrated, sophisticated integrated livery system to look for the production and the processing and the just takes in the delivery to the different sectors. One being the traditional setting and one being the consumers mostly grocery chains and that way. So when you think about the outcome of the process is in the middle. Its for different consumers. The packaging ands processing and other things. And the realignment, almost 50 percent chains, stopped very suddenly. I liken it to the fact that they were on a four lane interstate. And really a major crash occurred ahead. In two of those lanes have totally blocked pretty we although it happens and Pretty Things backup very quickly. And if were in that kind of thing, my spouse would say will wanted to anticipate this to make a detour around the crash. And maybe thats the question everybody is answering. Why did we not anticipate this. What could we done. The fact is that no one anticipated the issues that we have had the Food Supply Chain in the degree to which we were segregated in our production and process. But obviously as you folks and secretaries no, it is the usda role to be flexible and move very quickly in realigning this location and misalignments that we have had in the supply chain in order to do that. Im very proud to be here. You probably heard me say before, do the right thing and feed everyone. This is a huge challenge obviously. Uncertainly in our hunger areas but also just in our regular supply chains of the Grocery Stores. Remember, Second National hurricane warning initially people fled to the Grocery Stores and the shows became bear. And that created even more panic. As we saw people wondering, what we have enough food. That was the first question. And secondly almost right away, we had schools closing. What are these kids get their nutrition from. Those folks were feeding breakfast and lunch for school so we had to make very immediate flex abilities there. And secretaries, as you know, we all have to do things by rules and regulation. And we have certain criteria to preserve the integrity of the processes because this is public money. We have to preserve the integrity of that. And maintain the integrity of the way things that things are handled and delivered but also creates an inflexibility in times like this. So we had to do many labors initially in order to get these kids fed and it was amazing how the communities reached up and reached out to get the kids fed through a lot of programs. And one interesting thing was the partnership at the universities. And the global, and logistics company, pepsico, multinational joined together to deliver initially over 1 million meals a week to the school kids in rural areas the couldnt get into the pickup sites. And eventually went to 5 million meals a week during those times. The good news stories. We had many other laborers. We certainly had four our pandemic cdc were you loaded the amount of School Lunches and box us on the cards for reduced lunch kids there. So they could get that way. In many other laborers of that way. The School Nutrition professionals, locals School Systems and many in the private sectors have done wonderful things. And we had our stipulation predict and are low nutrition population. In the crisis at that occurred and we had to continue and have flexibility there. And Online Shopping. To enable that in many states. To all of those who have applied. We had to do other programs that help to move the food into our food banks and other things that is normally used for local disaster. They had household Distribution Program they usually is used for localized disaster when there is not access for Grocery Stores. We had to be able to use that in states as well. So it required a lot of creativity and ingenuity and the one program that we are really rolling out now is announced on friday. They were really proud of and that is the harvest of the families of the Food Box Program. Its really disheartening that all of us in agriculture, when a producer farmer, puts her bloods foot in tears into the growing animals and vegetables are produced, or milk and having to destroy that milk or dairy produce or meet because its a misalignment of cant getting up wrote 24 it needs to be. In the product were need to be. This Food Box Program at 3m dollars of the 19 billiondollar program that the president today was pretty 3 billion to the up and running. And the contracts in place over local distributors and they been used to using and serving the distribution market and retail. And in restaurants. And its a right nationwide that we love and look very much forward to that being rolled out in the other thing we try to do is to feed america group. As to work there early on with a programs and help get those end of people who locally in helping get food to those citizens who showed up at the food banks, and the plots their jobs. It is been quite a scramble. Obviously, borrowers and producers are in a real bind. Please also have a situation with her Food Processing and part of the chain, and his constituents and producing the food, we have to process in the packet. For consumer consumption. And we have had somewhat of a crisis in that area. With meals, our work is coming down with covid19 and we have had to work around it for the processing, closed in the executive order has helped us. We have turned the corner but we are still underneath what our capacity is. I think we can still say we will have been fronting for the future. Looks like we will have all of this plants except for a couple arent open operated their reduced workforce but theyre working very well. The usda said its really, student nutrition, has just been amazing. In a 24 hour section, our ams with this programs and delivering logistics programs to our food banks. The work has been amazing and im really proud of the fact, having done all that, in remote situations, we cant come together but we have been stopping almost all of the time. I feel more tired when i go having been on skype all day long but i have been having meetings all day long but anyway, the theme has just been amazing. I am really proud of the group in a part of all of these workers both from the farmer to the state to the field to the processors in the packers, to the logistics and the truckers credit deliver the food and Grocery Store stockers and Grocery Store checkout want to make sure that we have got a consistent supply. So the most efficient sophisticated synchronized Food Supply Chain in the world, has been nimble enough to continue the supply to our people with confidence that we can have fo food. I think that helps to fill that of doing the right thing and feeding everyone. Are we going to be perfect. Know i am not saying that plaintiff we have worked very hard though as people who need the food mostly, were able to get that. Thank you all and i look forward to hearing the rest of you all. I think, the week are going to now introduce our panel. And there have been a couple of changes in the panel so i want to make sure that people know that were going to go through for people first. President of the American Farm bureau, delighted to have years of the pretty second will be juliana, who is president and ceo of the north American Meat institute. And going to be talking a lot about the processing industry. And what is happening in terms of preparing this meat for the consumer. In the third will be leslie. President and ceo of fmi, is to be known as the Food Marketing institute to talk about the distribution of food in the recently side of the picture. And finally will be Katie Fitzgerald the ceo of feeding america. There we will talk about the impact on the nations food banks, then nations for, and maybe talk a little bit about the steps program as well as talking about this enormous increase in the numbers of people because of rapidly increased unemployment who are in these could make lines and we have not seen probably since the great depression. So given that, im going to start first with zippy then i will go to juliana than leslie and to katie and then if you would each maybe talk for about five minutes and the challenges that you see in the Food Supply Chain, and how it affects your business, your members and what you do predict so lets start with zippy. Zippie covid. Zippie unmute. Thank you so much. Zippie i feel honored and privileged to be among the speakers neck. Thank you to be the voice of the American Farmer and interpreted today, my role is to talk about the production of the pandemic how it has affected us. And of course, environments, there is no way you can talk about american agriculture and all the aspects of it. By i will touch on the major hotspots that we have been talking about the last couple of weeks. And of course, i have described the situation that we are in an agriculture. And we will start with this pandemic. Agriculture during the last seven or eight years is been a declining economy rated and everybody else is economy has been moving, ours has been kind of dwindling behind. Where about 50 percent of our income. And we are also having a difficult time with this last ingredient of the perfect storm after all of the natural disasters and everything that we have experienced rated we are very appreciative of the assistance that the secretary and the president has brought to the agriculture and the last two years. And we look forward to continuing the work. That perfect storm has caused an increase in the last 12 months ending in march of 2020 of increase in bankruptcy. 627 bankruptcies of 27 percent rated of the year before this. And we are very concerned about the ability of our farmers to be able to repay debt. In the flexibility that this Financial Markets have allowed for our farmers when into the future. And to be able to get operating loans to plan future crops. And of course, the main player in how we survived the financial revision that we are and, is going to depend on the problems that the secretaries going to deliver from the cares act. Im very appreciative of the president s and we think congress putting it out there and another the secretary and all of his employees have worked very hard and very diligent to be able to roll it out and look forward to that happening at the end of the month. And what comes in the package is going to really determine how much the farmers, how they can hold on to their futures. In one of the things that we have all been talking about for the last two or three weeks is severely crippled agriculture is the Processing Plants in the problems that we have had in getting animal and protein to harvest. And not just prepping but also in poultry and corn. Its also vegetables and fruits and vegetables. Its almost, the processing part of it, is really just hit us in the face. They really do talk about the processing before. And this is the important link that that is in the food chain. Of course the number one concern of all of us, is the employees on farms, and the employees in the Processing Plants, employees at the Grocery Stores predict everybody along the chain, be safe in the things that we can do to protect them and their families. In the new normal. Who knows rated this food chain, is a work in and operated today, may happened did not happen overnight. So how this will end up, effecting agriculture in the future, we really dont know. What we do know is the farmers, is that we do have to get the processing part of this right. We have to find the problem and get back to 100 percent capacity because we all know that pipeline, effectively animal to harvest, that pipeline is full. And what we have the processing, that pipeline backed up. It cost millions and millions and millions of dollars to our farmers. I want to say thank you to the secretary to the farm families who box program. Really excited about that pretty to have the conversation about creating a program such as that. We think they have done a tremendous job of that. We were delighted to see them deliver that out. The popular with more than 600 people putting in the plans to be able to utilize that print 600 companies putting food both back to work. And back out to the people who deserve it needed pretty sore just excited about being a partner in aspirated we can congratulate the secretary t program. One of the areas i have been talking about. But if they would talk, im really concerned about. It in this pandemic and people staying at tom, describing. That kind of a war among the people of our plans of continuing to slow down. And this is a part of a Rural America. To help our country become energy sufficient being able to not depend on the rest of the world for energy and corn in Rural America plays a major role in getting us to that position. In place to shut down, thats going to affect the ddg take. In the byproduct, that is fed to animals. And with the Processing Plant who god bless animals in the near future predict that is going to be less corn consumed. So corn, is really facing a difficult time. I am really concerned about what is going on without. The infrastructure, it just so important for Rural America and we need to kinda focus on whats going to happen and how we make that industry survived because its an important link and but our farmers depend on. And of course, and were real concerned about how the phase one comes out. We know that this Difficult Conversations going on about many different areas of society and difficult to conversations could make it a reality. And during this phase one trip trade agreement with chinas difficult. In all of the commodities need it very badly for phase 140 billion worth of purchases. Which china promises to exercise this year. We need to have that happen. It will help our farmers get through this. So we have had tremendous challenges. And i cant stop talking about agriculture. And to talk about my concern about bringing young people into agriculture. How can you ask a young man or a young woman to consider agriculture in the future when we are going through such difficult times. We have to make agriculture a bright future. We have to make to get it back on the profitable round. But we can brought people back to the industry and prepare them for the future. We can only bring in the bright young people back. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. You have ended right when i was going to tell you that so that worked out very well. So next month and we will get to questions afterwards predict i want people to know that. But next we have juliana who is president and ceo of the north American Meat institute has a huge background in agriculture. To talk about the prospecting side of the picture which is kind of the area that is received the most attention lately. The one that has been a gridlock event. For the supply chain. So juliana. Juliana thank you so much. It i am also very honored to be with you all today. My role i guess is to kinda represent a lot of the processing but of course meat and poultry processing has been very high profile in the recent weeks. Secretary perdue also touch on some of the things that the viewers here have been reading about. So it is my pleasure to kinda go back a little bit and talk about some of these challenges. What we have done to address them and how we are looking at moving forward as we began to see as secretary perdue said, we are turning the corner on these packing plants and other processors getting back up to full capacity. Way back in february when it became clear that we are going to be facing this pandemic, members of our organization across the entire spectrum, so from the very large companies, to the very small. It began meeting quickly by telephone, trade associations to chair best practices. They were actually very proactive in the kind of things that they put into place at the Processing Plants to deal with what was going to come our way because i was rolling across the whole country. Additional sanitation, extra communication about how to work within a plant within ppe if it was available and things that were communicated about being with people who were sick. Outside of the plant so screening questions at every opportunity, sending people away who are exhibiting any symptoms. Or if they answered yes to any of the questions. This all started towards the beginning of this whole thing. And yet, we knew it was coming and we have seen a tremendous amount of covid19 that has happened within the workforce. This was in the Processing Plants. The floor lessen constant communication with usda. Also with osha and with the cdc on getting some Additional Guidance on how to deal with the situation as local Health Authorities and state Health Authorities took a different approach as things begin to come up in their communities. And in addition to some of the challenges with covid19 in the workforce and the plants, there is a lot of absenteeism due to fear. And processing and the harvesting of animals in the processing is still a very laborintensive activity. And the ability to keep people. While the top priority for our companies was always at the safety and has been the safety of the workforce and continues to be, a slowing of the lines in the slowing of processing and the closure, as we have seen it rolling across the country in different geographic areas, with something that began to produce the kind of backup as zippy noted in agriculture of our livestock and that has become critical, critical problem a couple of weeks ago. It is something that the white house, usda and other agencies stepped up to address in quite an extraordinary way so we believe that we are may be the first industry outside of defense that has been the subject of a defense production act order, executive order anyway, and that was a sign that we really needed to have that kind of federal involvement in getting our plants back up to speed because it has become so critical. Were looking at all the challenges that we have Going Forward to get our food service back up and running but our First Priority is the safety of our workers and then to get our plants back up to speed 100 so we can pack sauce backlog in the heartland. Thank you. Thank you for being so synced in your discussion. I mentioned we have had some changes and we are glad that you are here but we had a couple of folks who couldnt be here and you may have seen when you entered this zoom situation. I want to make sure folks know that they can use a q a tab for questions if they have them so that because there will be questions asked and if we dont get them we will try to at least get in a situation where we can answer them the best way possible. Third speaker is leslie, president and ceo of fmi, former Food Marketing institute distributor and the people who get the food from the processor or from the former, in some cases, to the consumer and so leslie, they talk about this from your perspective, retailing side of the picture. Thank you, mr. Secretary. Its a pleasure to be with you all today. Im happy to talk about the experience weve had in the last couple of months. Clearly, these have been unprecedented times that helped for all in the industry to establish and really enact new precedents in the industry and to almost do it overnight which has not been an easy feat but i am proud to say that by and large, acrosstheboard we have been able to rise to the occasion. There are specific areas that we have been focused on in the Retail Sector particularly, want references that youve heard already to the supply chain feed. The number of customers coming into our stores have driven extraordinary demand at a time when the supply was being tested in ways that we have never been tested before, due to the things weve heard about already, labor shortages, plant closures and this Unprecedented Demand that we have experienced has been almost overwhelming and what we have seen is our industry suppliers have responded with sku alignment and with distribution pacing and weve also realigned the supply as the secretary mentioned a few minutes ago. Products that normally would have been destined for the Food Service Sector we worked hard to figure out how to repurpose those and move them into the retail area. In fact, fmi crated a partnership early on with the Food Service Distributor association to redirect some of those Food Service Products to the Retail Sector and weve even grown that since that initial partnership to a Broader Partnership not the matches buyers and sellers across the entire supply chain. Clearly this squeeze on that supply chain has been important to address. We also had unprecedented test to our online capacity. We were experiencing what i would call sort of a gently sloping trend to Online Grocery shopping and overnight it became more of iraq climb, i think for us as an industry. We doubled, and in some cases tripled, the demand for home delivery, store pickup which most of us refer to as quick and collect and all of these changes that challenged us and those taxing the technical and Technology Capacity of our Member Company stored online ordering system as well as the physical pickup and delivery capabilities for the industry. The third area that we focused on is unparalleled safety requirements and what weve seen is that the Grocery Store in many ways animals communities has become the social hub for the community because no one is going anywhere else except to the Grocery Store. In those context we had to be mindful of and serve as a model for safe distancing while people are in the stores. I think this is yet another way that we have demonstrated clearly what has been referred to already as how essential food retail and Food Distribution is in any disaster situation. Our industry responded with the safety requirements like limitations at the store, both on the numbers of people in some cases who could enter the store at the same time, as well as in some cases the numbers of products that people goodbye in various categories. Weve done specific instore social distancing protocols that show how far 6 feet really is when you are standing in a checkout line, for example. We double down on cleaning and sanitizing protocols and we created special hours for our special needs customers and we have established new precedents in Customer Service and employee safety through the use of sneeze guards, masks, and the list goes on and on as things have happened. The next area that is been very important in testing the mettle of our workforce and we talked about the importance of the workforce here and frankly, people who go to work and food retail and in other parts of the Food Distribution chain i think dont have in their job descriptions that they are to be a public hero. I would say that all of the folks throughout the distribution chain have been exactly that and they have been heroic and how they have shown up for work, anytime they would prefer to not have to but this demand for labor is something that our stores have clearly recognized and we have worked closely with them to try to help them work on hiring the literally hundreds of thousands of new employees that have gone into the Food Distribution sector since this whole thing started. We created an online Talent Exchange to help allow our customers and our companies who have employees, who were not being deployed currently, to know about openings that are happening in the Food Distribution system and create that match so that those individuals can find positions in our companies can be staffed appropriately. We have currently 390,000 impacted workers have joined the Talent Exchange via the companies they previously worked for so they could be available to be hired by other companies in the industry. Finally, critical work that we have all done with the secretary and with other Government Agencies, both at the federal level and the state and local level and i have to give a shout out to all of those Government Agencies who have worked so hard and so closely with us to make sure we gained access to the safety where we need it and making the necessary regulatory and other adjustments that secretary perdue referenced a few moments ago. These have all been invaluable to us in allowing us to do what we need to do to meet our customers needs. I know we will hear more about this from katie in a few minutes but certainly the work that has been done in the snap arena has been tremendously helpful in making sure that we can meet those who need help the most and maybe for the first time have had to ask for help. We are doing everything we can to make that as painless and as easy a process as possible. I would say in closing these unprecedented times that put the supply chain to the test and we had hits and we have suffered cuts and bruises along the way but i think we have proven that our system is incredibly resilient and stronger than ever and we look forward to continuing to demonstrate the importance of this industry and what we are capable of as an industry so thank you very much. Thank you, leslie. Before i get to katie im delighted to talk about the essential nature of the workers, all the way from the farmers to all those folks in the meat and poultry industry who work day today, getting the product out to your grocery workers, people that sometimes we ignore and do not think how important they were to our lives. In fact, this has caused a new appreciation for those who work hard every single day to deliver the food produced to the processors and we appreciate your mentioning that as well. Katie, coo and vp of the great Group Feeding america and the president was unable to be here today but we are delighted youre here. I would mention one thing. In addition to maybe giving statistics about what is going on how you are dealing with millions of americans who never needed or track tried to get Food Supplies because they were working and overnight they are not working. Many are eligible for snap but just havent taken advantage of it just yet because of the speed and rapidity of this crisis that we are having and how you are at the front lines feeding millions of people is amazing and we appreciate the efforts of you and your team but thought you may want to talk for a few minutes and then i will recognize my colleague to begin the questions. Katie. Thank you so much, secretary. Of course, secretary perdue who we are absolutely honored to be able to be a part of this panel and discussion. I will start by building up of what leslie said and responding to the secretarys questions which is an appropriate place to start which is extending our appreciation and recognition for the tremendous heroes that are showing up every day in the 200 food banks that are part of feeding america and the 60000 agencies that are a part of our network. Many folks dont realize during the course of an average year that charitable food system, feeding america network, food banks and agencies depends on 2 million volunteers also and every day americans are coming out even in the midst of this pandemic to show up and make sure their neighbors and former coworkers and others have the food they need, vital food they need to nurse their families. It is humbling and it is difficult and i am here in the great state of oklahoma where i was the ceo of the Regional Food Bank of oklahoma so like many of the states counterparts of the organizations represented on this call and if you have not had to serve food to someone who has never had to ask for that help people come to that experience with a great deal of shame and embarrassment. What we have tried to communicate to people all across this great land is that this is why our system needs this and why we enjoyed this tremendous Publicprivate Partnership with the Food Industry and with government to make sure that people when they are afraid of not been able to feed their children that they know they can rely on americas food system in terms of demand we have seen, as you can imagine, an incredible surge in demand. We have been full survey and our member food banks every two weeks since this began and we have consistently gotten data that shows us that on average food banks are experiencing a 70 increase in the numbers of people who are seeking Food Assistance across communities throughout this country and we serve every community and every county in the country. Of those people to your point, secretary glickman, 40 are consistently folks who have never had to ask for help with food so they are trying to navigate as you astutely pointed out, a very complex and for some scared and dont and cant predict their future and were trying to meet those folks where they are and reassure them and make sure they know that food will be there for them and we could not do that without the tremendous support from private industry as represented on this panel and certainly the role of the federal government. Our best estimate right now and we did a sixmonth Impact Analysis where we are working on a 12 month analysis but our six month analysis tells us that we can estimate that you will see 70 million more americans experiencing Food Insecurity as a result of the pandemic. That is a 46 increase up to 47 million wagons are excited to be food insecure prior to covid19. Of that 54 million, 80 million are children. We have a tremendous challenge on our hands and we will continue to meet the vital support of the federal government as we move forward. We been delighted in as has been referenced by others on the call with the present visions that up and put into place for the first two acts that gone through congress, increases in t fab and the establishment of the cpap program, coronavirus Food Assistance program, farmers to families and as well as the waivers and other flux abilities that have been provided in increases in snap but what we do know and believe to be true is that this increase in demand is going to continue for some time and we are modeling with some of the brightest folks in the country trying to get a grip on what that might look like as we look out 12 months and expect fully to see this increased level of demand and we will need to continue to see increases in snap. We very much support a 50 increase in benefits to snap and we would like to see the minimum benefit allowed to be at 30 rather than 15 for individual snap and rowleys. It is one of the best ways that we can solve this problem for American Families. As leslie said, peoples ability to go in and purchase food at the stores that they need and to keep that supply chain flowing smoothly we dont want to see American Families spiral into financial ruin because of what has happened and to keep our Food Industry for farmers and families able to access that food. Snap is a tremendous boost economically and for those families. Of course, we would like to continue to see the level of support that has been given in t fab and in other areas to make sure our farmers can move products from fields and ranches into families homes and our food banks are doing their level best to be ready to receive that food in those boxes coming and we at feeding america and food banks have been working to connect and we will not rest until we make sure that we are meeting the needs of the american people. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate all four of you for excellent remarks. I now turn to my colleague to start the questions. Thank you, very much. Thank you to our panelists. These were excellent presentations. I think it really established multiple issues we are dealing with during this pandemic and during this crisis time. It is likely that this situation and this crisis will last for some time and so many or all of you really have talked about the change that is happening. Where do you see that we or that the food system will go from here . The trends weve talked about, what kinds of things will continue to accelerate in terms of practices . Are there policies and regulations that may need to be changed . If we could hear from each of you just on the future site of this and maybe we will go in the same order of the way you spoke on the initial panel. Thank you. Thank you, secretary bannerman. I appreciate the opportunity to state that no one really knows what the future holds and how this will have a permanent effect on the food chain. I do know there will be a lot of problems especially in the pipeline that these are into the Processing Plants and how the Processing Plants may adapt to that pipeline. As you think about a farmer geared up to raise say one million half birds a year out like i do on my farm and all my financials bills dont produce those birds and then all of a sudden i have to cut back 30 or cut back 40 or the cop but he provided the birds for me they start cutting back and then we start falling into very Financial Difficulties so there will have to be some leniency and financing and adjustments. I really truly think there will be some increase in cost of production of food so that farmers can handle what mike calls us to have cutbacks on the farm just because the food chain is going to take time for them to build up for the farm so they can handle the volume that we can produce. This is not a food issue. This is not a supply issue. Its a supply chain and i hate calling it an issue but its an adjustment. Some people out there are doing the best they can do under an unbelievable swing and buying patterns of a consumer. I mean, we got heroes from one end of the chain to the other and its been amazing that we have been nimble enough to handle it and not have worse problems than we have. Thank you. Thank you, secretary. Zippy said it so well and i think that for us to look at the ways in which usda was able to assist on a shortterm basis, for example, with labeling, not a food safety regulation but just a labeling regulation to allow things that couldnt go into foodservice were labeled for food service to be redirected to retail. Those kinds of things, as we continue this slow process and we all believe, i think, that it will be a very slow process to get back to food service and retail and more as secretary perdue said earlier that this 5050 situation we will need to do a lot of thinking together with our government as to how we become flexible in allowing that to happen in a more smoothed out to face is buried we were so grateful to be able to have those conversations as we, you know, had a lot of stuff that backed up and a lot of product that backed up right away as food service went down. I think a lot of the members ended up donating a lot of product to feeding america, as a matter of fact, all across country. Those are great shortterm things and i thank you asked about longerterm solutions and we are beginning to think about those and want to have a role in how we become more flexible and more aligned, maybe that is the word of the day, more aligned so that when we have the next hopefully not a pandemic but when we have the next challenge, significant challenge to our Food Supply Chain that we have learned from this experience whether it has been some kind of regulatory taxability but also proactive depth that industries are able to take to be as prepared as possible. We would welcome those kinds of further conversations with the whole supply chain lined appear. Thank you very much. This is something that we we have spent time thinking about. As you might imagine Shopping Patterns have changed dramatically in the past couple of months. You may also be aware that weve been tracking and fmi, we been tracking shopping trends for more than 40 years so this is something that we take very seriously and watch carefully. We typically do it once a year but since we started in this pandemic situation we been tracking just about weekly to see what changes we are seen among topping behaviors. What i can share with you is that we are now making lists in ways we havent before and we are thinking clearly on what it is we want to buy instead of just going to the store to see what looks good. We are doing planning for the first time in a while, i would say. We are also talking to others in the household. Its no longer a situation where the primary shopper just goes and buys but we are now talking to each other because we are home together and so we are talking to each other about what it is we like to have. Also, we are adjusting where we shop. Prior to the pandemic we had reached a point where most shoppers were, on average, shopping or. 4 different retail banners in a months time. That is now down to about one, or to different banners. We are not going as far away from home and we are trying to buy as much as we can in as few visits as we can. We also have noted changes in eating habits. In our recent study of more than 1000 American Adults we found that 76 of the participants said they change their eating habits during covid19 and 36 of those said they were eating healthier than they had been before. I think what will be interesting is it to see whether the sales data actually proves that. When it is all set and done, that is what has been reported from consumers. Also, i think an improvement we have seen is that concerns regarding access to food have lessened overtime since the pandemic started and they have gone from about 36 of being concerned about having access to food at the end of march 2 just about 25 now so that is an improvement that we think is critically important. The other thing i would mention quickly is family meals. As you may remember one of the things we have promoted for a number of years now is National Family meals month which is called in september and has become, frequent more of a movement now and just month and people are engaging in it, certainly in these last couple of months much more frequently and it will be interesting to see how the focus on family meals and eating at home together and how that influences social behaviors which, of course, is part of why we have promoted family meals because of the positive social effect of eating as a family. We are quite intrigued to see how that is going to affect our behaviors Going Forward and then finally in my opening comments i talked about Online Shopping and the meteoric rise in Online Shopping we seen in the last 60 days is something that wouldve been hard to predict. In fact, in january of this year we predicted that some of the numbers that we have seen in the last maybe three months were numbers that we might achieve over the next five years and this is all happened really quickly and the question remains how much people want to rely on someone else to do their picking in the stores for them and whether that convenience factor that they have enjoyed through this process and frankly, the safety and security factors that go along with it during a pandemic is something that they want to continue to do as we come out of this situation. We are quite intrigued to see how Shopping Patterns will change and we will be tracking those and look forward to chances to reports of the changes in the future. Thank you. I will just know quickly to build on what others have said. For us, i would say the two things that stand out for us when we think about the future of how we hope we can respond even more effectively in the future is making sure we are trying to bridge the gap between farm to food bank and it was so painful, as you are all well aware and is again mentioned it, to watch farmers have to turn over their crops and stores of milk or dispose of animals when there were thousands of people in line asking for Food Assistance. We would love to continue to work on policy solutions that will help us accelerate the bridging of that gap when this country needs to do it in a very agile way. We have some capacity opportunities to boot build in a charitable food system and i will be one have a way to make sure that system can quickly connect to farmers across this country and then the last piece i would reiterate is the Critical Role that snape can play in making sure that our country is able to very quickly respond to these surges in demand depending on what may be going on. Is it a program that works so well and is designed really well to complement the ongoing role of our Food Supply Chain and we want to very much continue to see those investments there. Thanks. If i may add just a question because there have been several questions along and i would address this to julianna but anyone could answer. So many parts of the American Economy have become so much more concentrated, where their airlines or banking and food and agriculture and so there has been a lot of discussion about the nature of meat and poultry processing where we are far fewer plants producing more food. Then when something happens then you have more people affected just because you have fewer plants. I want to know if you could talk about that and talk about what you see in the future as you deal with that issue, particularly as you deal with the issue of health and safety of people who work in the industry. Well, the concentrate the concentration or the consolidation of into a number of small number of companies and i will focus on the beef area for a bit has been relatively constant for about the last 30 years so it is not been something that has increased in concentration if you will, in recent times. They are very expensive things to do to run efficiently and so what you the benefit to it is that for the last 20 years or so families have spent only about 10 of their disposable income on food so part of the efficiency of the system that we have been discussing here this afternoon does come from the advice of the plants and the difficulty then happens when you have one that goes down that has quite a Significant Impact on the overall capacity and we are getting animals through the system and getting food into or to consumers when there is one event such as last summer there was a fire at a kansas facility. What we had here with the pandemic was nationwide and because of the nature of this crisis in the nature of the virus spreading throughout the workforce you had significant downturn in capacity. At this point, i believe, even with the plants that have come back online we are still running reduced to about 24 capacity on the port side in about 31 on the beef side. That is trending in the right direction in terms of getting back up to speed but it does mean that the attention to health and safety of the workforce is paramount. It has been, as i mentioned earlier, its a very labor intensive, physical activity to process meat and poultry but it is or it cant be done without our heroic team members who show up every day in these challenging times to do that. What we have seen is, in addition to allow the proactive things that we have done in the plants, to address the health and safety of the workers, face shields, facemasks, dividers and hallways, dividers and places where there putting on and off their protective equipment and in cafeterias and in places where they come into the plant those are the kinds of things that need to be communicated over and over again, not just to the workforce and very effective ways but also in the communities where these plants are operating so that support for those workers and for the Economic Activity that is going on in these communities is part of the equation when we think about why they are operating in how they are operating. I think that for the companies themselves that own numerous plants they are all different sizes but they are not all massive plants and they might own several plants with a fair number of plants but they dont or they are not all the same size. I guess that is the tradeoff with the consolidation that happened three decades ago. You do have a price you pay for food for meat and poultry at the Grocery Store that continues to be acceptable to our consumers. Great. Thank you. I would like to follow up a little bit because i think that the issue of meat has been the forefront of the news lately but to put a different spin on it and maybe julie could comment on this a bit but i dont know whether leslie would comment with regards to big Grocery Stores but reuters ran a story yesterday and the headline was as u. S. Meat workers all sick and supplies dwindle exports to china sore. Now, you talked earlier about the importance of trade and julianna you talked about the issue of the reduce capacity in the plant so how do we create this access for consumers and yet maintain our export markets which, as you indicated, are so important . Im a southern gentleman so ladies, julianna, go first. Well, so the impact to our farmers has been tremendous for and to all of us in the Meat Industry for keeping the best quality beef, pork, poultry raised by our hardworking American Farmers here in our export markets. It has been a tremendous success story. We feed the world and we do it in a way that is efficient, environmentally sound and keeps our american agricultural economy in a tremendous spot, most of the time when those markets are available to us. If we go to not exporting in some ways, some export control at this point that will have the impact of raising prices here at home. The ability for, you know, if you have heard the phrase everything but the oink so every part of the animal that are harvested that are raised and harvested are used. They are used somewhere in the system. There are a lot of parts of the animals that maybe arent popular here for our consumption but are very popular in other parts of the world and so that ingenuity and ability to maintain those markets keeps our agricultural economy strong and these people around the world and has the impact of making us all a little closer together, i think. We would not want to give up those markets if we dont have to. I think the real challenge is getting these plants back up to capacity so that we can deal with the backlog that we have. As leslie said it well, we been dealing with really increased demand. An incredible as we have seen the same numbers that leslie has seen and was talking about this past week with meat in the news we are seeing demand numbers at the Grocery Store the world like at the beginning of the pandemic. I think that the ability to continue to produce just depends on getting these plants back to a situation where we are moving things into the system that are already there as efficiently as possible. Im going to end with saying i am like leslie, very optimistic about the resilience with the supply chain. I would say there is no need for concern that what is being exported is going to impact our supplies here at home. [inaudible] that is why the safety of the employee, regardless of what link in the food chain it is is always first but when you talk about trade when everything has been running smooth and everything in agriculture is tight line in the chain we need to be able to sell those products across the country. The item that julianna spoke of was right. The world has different cultures in it and like different parts of the animal and my chickens, americans dont like fine meat and they dont really like [inaudible]. But most of it goes across somewhere else. As a chicken farmer i want that to happen. The other thing is we have to make sure we continue to trade with these countries because you as secretary knows how difficult it is to hit the markets and once you lose that market they go somewhere else and buy their product and have to talk them into coming back and doing business thus is very difficult. Its a very sensitive area we have to talk about but we have to keep those trade lines open for the future of our agriculture. The other thing to i would like to speak to is we talk about small family farms. Over 95 of the farms across america are owned by small families and thats wonderful but whats the definition of a family farm today . Its not the same as it was in the 30s and 40s and 60s. Today to make 11 for a family where there is a dad and son and maybe an uncle or cousin you got to farm three or 4000 acres of land or you got to have 500 [inaudible] so there is a lot of different in that. To do that we have a summer to move that commodity to have a market for it. We are in a Global Market whether we like it or not. To do that we got to what sets us apart from the world is our reliability and ability to produce quality and delivered on time with our infrastructure and that is what sets us apart. We may never regain those markets back. Absolutely. I have a question, probably more for katie than anybody else. Questions are raised about snap and about this new food box that the usda is going to get to consumers, whether through the feeding America Program or elsewhere. The question is is that snap is to have a much greater bipartisan support for it and its become more partisan in recent years and im just curious, how you see the relationship between snap and all these millions of people coming in and signing up and getting participating in the food bank system. Are you encouraging folks to go into the snap program if they qualify or if they permit their qualifications or if waivers are needed . There are a lot of people that may see these food bank lines and say we dont need it snap program but all you need is its like during the depression where you see those lines, can you spare a diamond people stay in line to get food and the food stamp for the snap program has been a remarkable way of allowing more people, mostly with families, many temporary to get access to quality nutritious food. Too long of a question but i wonder if you might answer that. I will build on what you laid out there, secretary glickman. We know that in a pre covid environment for every meal that the charitable Food Assistance provides and that is 200 food banks serving every county in the United States the snap can provide night meals. It is at a scale and a solution that is beyond what the charitable sector can provide. When you are in an environment that you are in, all of us together right now with this unprecedented level in surge in demand it is the right solution to be deployed along with making sure that we are doing everything we can to optimize the charitable food system as well. At food banks all across the country make sure to ask people again 40 of whom, right now, have never had to access charitable food in their life and as they are coming to food banks that they are not only leaving with food and we cant wait to have the farmers or family boxes coming online soon but that they are also learning about what programs the dominant programs that they could qualify for to make sure they see their families. From our point of view its a nonpartisan solution and we hope people can continue or can look at it that way because it really does so much for our Retail Partners and does so much for making sure food is moving through the supply chain and it boosts local economy. For every dollar invested in it snap it is producing a dollar 70 an economic again in local communities. That is what our communities need right now. I cant speak to obviously there are folks who have a variety of different feelings about the snap program but we believe the evidence is overwhelming that it is a terrific solution for the american family, farmers and Food Industry. If i could also add to that. Let me just say that on behalf of the nations retailers we are proud partners with usda and executing the snap program through our stores. For our organization, we are almost always, i think annually some of the largest contributors to the nations food bank as well. We are involved in both aspects of this and think it is a Critical Role for our industry to play is certainly from the retail and hotel sector and will continue to do so. We work closely with feeding america for many years and look forward to continuing to do that, as well as with usda on the snap program. Thank you. If i might now followup a bit on looking at food aid and the needs out there, which i thank you so ably puts on the table, i think this is been a lot of creativity during this time of crisis with all of the children out of school and the replacements that are being used for School Lunches. Some people are picking up lunches at the school and picking up food and some people are, you know, school buses are being used to deliver the food to the children. There is also this new ebt program for the replacement of School Lunches. The question i have is has there been any discussion about how the summer feedings programs would work . Could it be a continuation of the school lunch current ebt programs and other kinds of programs that are going on . Or is there a possibility that we will not have that kind of continued opportunity for getting food to these children during the summer months . Secretary, im happy to start there. We very much would like to see the noncognitive grant rule which has been waived for federal nutrition programs for children continue to the summer and frankly, for as long as schools would be out of session. I can speak from personal experience as a former food bank ceo that served 53 counties in central and western oklahoma that our ability to feed children in the summer months drops off precipitously that because a congregant feeding roles in Rural America and its very difficult to get meals to children who live out in Rural America and farm communities they cant get to the congregant feeding site. One of the things that we hope people will see from this pandemic is the tremendous leadership of that usda has done to waive that and make sure children could take those home and its been a godsend for families all over this nation and we would love to see continued creativity and new thinking about how we can best meet childrens needs through that program and then the pandemic ebt solution is critical to make sure again that ease of consumers to get that food in the equivalent of those deals in the Grocery Store from our retailers and they are so well articulated and the commitment of american retailers to participate in a snap. Both of those are critical solutions. Thank you. Im just wondering, do you have any live questions you would like to ask . Bill is the leader of the bcp effort in this and i just didnt know i will go right ahead, mr. Secretary. Give a number of questions coming in through outside that should be answered. If you would try answering them. A lot of the questions relate to the public support for our feeding programs, food snap programs and summer feeding programs and i wonder if you are all involved in this in one way or the other from producing the Food Industry beating the food. How do you gauge the public support during this time . I will jump in to say we have or have been overwhelmed with the embrace that americans have had about recognizing the food and security of their neighbors and wanting to pitch in and help and mother that is making a charitable contribution to their local food bank or to feeding america which has been tremendous to the inordinate number of offers weve gotten from private industry to come in and stand beside us at the food banks and offer coolers and freezers and chocks and just the outpouring of generosity is so emblematic of who we are as americans and again, our experiences always have been that Food Insecurity is most effectively addressed when it is a public, private partnership and the tremendous role of the federal government and the state government. The states have been involved in participating in the rules, waivers, deploy National Guards and food banks to help provide food so it is a testament to who we are that we dont want to see anyone of us hungry and afraid of how we would feed their children. Its tremendous. I would certainly agree. Im sorry, go ahead. I would totally agree with the comments. Weve seen this Publicprivate Partnership thing has been critical in recent months. We have seen the companies do Amazing Things and i would see one comedy that has gone darkly to farmers and bought a product and then turned around and donated it to the local food bank. I just think that compassion and outpouring of support for our neighbors is unprecedented at least in my lifetime and something i think is so critical to try to achieve our goals here which is to make sure that all our citizens are able to be best. I just intervene . The lack of refrigeration is a problem that we could address in some way through either federal, state, local, private or get the impression that the transportation and refrigeration is as you watch farmers unable to get rid of some of their product or milk or whatever and there is no way to get from point a to point b except on an ad hoc basis. That was a question asked by the audience. From my perspective i think that is a challenge but i would say it may be less of a challenge today and was 60 days ago or 45 days ago when we were so concerned about meeting this overwhelming demand in the items being sold at retail and there is a little less pressure now with dad and i think we are not feeling as much of the stress that we have felt on where we were going to find enough truck drivers, where we would get enough vehicles to transport product et cetera and to redeploy things from the Food Service Sector into nonfood service jobs and activities has made a huge difference on that front as well. Secretary glickman, may i ask about what public support is out there . People are concerned about whether or not farmers will still farm this year and how they will survive and restarted the [inaudible] and we took 50 Million People with the and people have responded all over the country in the world with that and i thought im not a big social media person but i thought that was pretty impressive and that was really unbelievable accomplishment. The other thing is since we wrote the letter with feeding americans to the usda and to work that out we are constantly having Companies Call us and say weve got refrigeration and we got chocks and every week we have another company or another farmer or someone call in and say that theyre happy to be a part of this and how can they help and we pass those on to the people that can take that in and make it work. We been overwhelmed. Like 911 this is the 911 moment for us and brings the best out of americans. Im just real proud of our country from the top to the bottom. I also will build on what julie said earlier that we at feeding america along with everyone involved in the supply chain wants to make sure that there will be an other side of the sunday that we have a supply chain which has been resilient and strong but comes out Even Stronger and a charitable food system that frankly comes out stronger and people have seen and been unfortunately reminded of the incredible value that the charitable food system played both in the supply chain as well as making sure that on a dime it can pivot to meet the needs of hungry americans and we are very much wanting to make sure that that system continues to be as robust as it is but more so in the future. If i could ask one question that was asked from the audience and it was about how to be continue to discuss the issue that is near and dear to both of my heart and that is nutrition security, not just Food Insecurity. Lastly, i thank you raised in your remarks about that people seem to be eating healthier but is it something that we probably want to start watching and i think it is particularly important now when we know this covid disease is impacting people who have diet related diseases like obesity and diabetes and its a more severe impact it is showing on his people and so i think we cannot lose sight in the discussion of food that nutrition really has to underscore everything in the long run. I dont know if anybody wants to comment on this but i think it is a very important question. I will comments. Thank you for raising it, secretary. I think its an incredibly important part of the equation prayed i referenced nutrition in a couple of contexts in my opening comments and one is what consumers are reporting to us that they are doing as they are at home and, you know, the data will tell us shortly probably whether in fact, what they report is what they are actually doing and eating healthier at home but i would also say that one of the reasons we have been so supportive of family meals in this notion of a family Meal Movement is because we know that family meals cooked at home are more nutritious and the data showed that they just are more nutritious and families eating at home have lots of other social benefits as well. Im hopeful that in addition to what our consumers that we are serving tell us they are doing that this notion of the fact that we are all eating together probably at unprecedented levels, at least in my lifetime, will have the desired effect of having us all focus on a more nutritious diet then we might normally have if we were just running around like chickens with our heads cut off like we normally do. Hopefully this will be a good way for us to begin to focus more on nutrition and weight we are feeding our family. We leave this program to fulfill our longtime commitment to gavel to gavel coverage of the senate. You can watch the rest of this program at cspan. Org. Taking you now live to the floor where lawmakers