California Agricultural Issues Lab
of the University of California
Marketplace / May 11, 2021
“So China has turned to U.S. corn, and that drives prices in the United States,” said agriculture professor Daniel Sumner at University of California, Davis.
He said American farmers have been growing more corn to meet demand, so they have less room for other crops.
“Corn takes land away from wheat. Well, that reduces wheat supply, and you increase the price of wheat as a consequence,” Sumner said.
KRON4 / April 26, 2020
[T]he CEO of Tyson is sending out a warning to expect less pork, beef and chicken at the grocery store.
“That doesn’t seem to be on the horizon yet… but we have had some disruptions,” Daniel Summer said.
Those disruptions, says Daniel Sumner — a U.C. Davis agricultural economist — will not create a shortage of meat.
ABC10 / April 29, 2020
Despite the ad Tyson Foods released over the weekend, saying the food supply chain in America is breaking, UC Davis Professor Daniel Sumner said we could expect to see some higher prices, but he doesn’t expect to see shelves being wiped out anytime soon.
“If you want to have some very specialized meat product, you may find that in short supply in your local market on the day you’re shopping, if you went back the next day, it may be there, but I don’t think anybody has to worry about the supply chain in America, we’re in pretty good shape,” Sumner said.
And he said the only way we will see a shortage is if people panic buy, just like they did with toilet paper.
“As we’ve learned in the past month or two, you could certainly create a shortage in the sense that consumers can altogether if we all ran out and decided to stock up every freezer space that we have with steaks and pork chops,” Summer said.
San Francisco Chronicle / April 28, 2020
“The prices for farmers have collapsed,” Sumner said. Just as dairy farmers have had to dump milk that they can’t sell, some farmers have had to kill their livestock without selling it to the market.
“The egg industry has been declining for decades in California,” Sumner said. “Raising eggs is about converting corn and soybeans to eggs. It’s expensive to haul corn and soybeans around. And we don’t grow corn and soybeans in California.”
