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Ag retail supply chain disruptions likely

An extension soybean specialist does not want farmers underestimating the impact COVID-19 could have throughout the supply chain.

Seth Naeve with the University of Minnesota says disruptions are likely.

“It’s like the old thing where you just flip the switch and the lights come on, you turn the water tap and the water comes out. We expect the mail to be there and we expect our chemicals to be delivered. We expect the FSA office to be open, all this stuff is just supposed to happen. And a lot of that stuff is just not going to happen at the same rate that it was before.”

He tells farmers to expect the unexpected.

“Because of, you know, some sort of weird glitch in some sort of a system where somebody working from home wasn’t able to push the right buttons to be able to make stuff happen. So that’s my biggest concern.”

Naeve tells Brownfield farmers should start lining up seed and chemicals as soon as possible.