Grocery Stores have seen a large increase in sales over the past several weeks. People have been rushing to stock up on food and supplies during this Coronavirus outbreak. MPB’s Kobee Vance reports on how the state’s agriculture industry is keeping shelves stocked.
Grocery Stores across the state have seen empty shelves for produce, meat and cleaning supplies for weeks. While initial panic buying is subsiding, demands are still high. Mississippi’s Agriculture Commissioner, Andy Gipson, says it may look good for businesses to have empty shelves…
“But the result of that is an immediate increase in price at the grocery counter. Our Farmers are not seeing that increase in the price, our cattlemen are not seeing that increase in cattle prices. So it’s gonna take some time, but I think in time there will be a long term benefit as we get to the other side of this crisis.”
Mississippi’s agriculture market is built on serving equally - grocery stores - and - restaurants according to Josh Maples, Economist with the Mississippi State Extension Service. He says the supply of meat grocery stores have now-- was ordered months in advance.
“We saw this run on grocery stores and we saw these people flock to the meat counter, and grocers are in a setting where they can’t just quickly get more tomorrow. It takes time to plan these things out. And I think we’re seeing that with the empty shelves. It shows you how it’s not an overnight thing to just replenish the supply chain.”
Henry Cooper is the owner of Country Meat Packers in Florence, where they package and distribute sausages across the country to restaurants and grocery stores. He says he’s having to change his entire business model during the outbreak because of restaurant closures.
“With their business being off really bad, obviously it’s gonna affect us. So we’ve just been trying to pick up the balance of what we can get by selling to our grocery store partners. We got a lot of people here we’re just trying to keep employed, you know? Keep going.“
Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson asks Mississippians to only buy what they need to make sure every resident has access to the food they need.