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Royalfan5

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Royalfan5

  1. 56 minutes ago, Bruno Sardine said:

    I don't doubt this, and thanks for sharing your knowledge. But what is up with all the reports about disruptions to our meat supply? General consensus here is things are fine (there were posts in the recent past about the glut of food in commercial and institutional supply chains).  Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

    https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/833623211/pork-plant-closure-highlights-disruption-of-food-supply-chain-due-to-coronavirus

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/smithfield-ceo-warns-of-risks-to-pork-supply-11586730489

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/business/coronavirus-food-supply.html

     

     

    There are disruptions because we aren't running the plants hard enough to kill the amount of animals that need to be, so animals are backing up and less meat is being processed on a daily basis. We came into this with very burdensome stocks of meat, especially of pork so we have a lot of runway on that end. The company that is in the crosshairs for having the largest plant go do has a lot of incentive to scream about disruptions to get help. The meat chain isn't well understood by the general public or the media, and lends itself to a lot of stories like this. I get called by Bloomberg and Reuters fairly often to talk about meat stuff, and the reporters just aren't very well versed in the stuff, so a lot can get lost in translation in these stories too. 

    • Like 3
  2. 7 minutes ago, Tuco said:

    An update from corn country...

    As of today, Nebraska has 901 cases, 20 deaths.   I am optimistic that Omaha and Lincoln will weather the first wave without overrunning our health care capacity, except for a pretty big asterisk.  According to this tracker, Douglas County (most of Omaha) has 251 cases for a population of 571k.  More troubling, Hall County (Grand Island), has 214 cases for a population of 61k.  That's a per capita rate of 3500 cases/million population.   That's about twice the national rate, and 8x the state average.  Italy has a per capita rate of 2732/mil. What's worse, the testing is still completely shit, and 35% of the people being tested are testing positive, compared to a state-wide 7.7%.  So the confirmed cases are obviously the just tip of iceberg, with only people with significant symptoms being tested.  The health care system in Grand Island is already maxing out their capacity, and, since I highly doubt they were exercising good social distancing practices for the last month, they are likely no where near their peak.  So that's the asterisk; they will need to send their patients to Omaha, Lincoln, and other hospitals in the region. Granted, it's still a small population of 61,000 that are likely becoming a hot-spot, but nearby Adams (Hastings, pop 30k) is starting to flare up as well.  Hastings and Grand Island are about 20 minutes apart, so I imagine they share medical capacity.  Grand Island may just be the first case study on how this virus could rip through small towns that ignore distancing warnings.

    And speaking of Hastings, and ignoring distancing recommendations, the State Senator, Steve Halloran, who represents Hastings is a fucking moron.  Three days ago he cowrote an editorial on who we should just power through the outbreak, because some of his constituents are losing money on their cattle sales.  

     

     

    It's mostly the packing plant blowing that up, and a large packing plant related birthday party that spread it from JBSwift in GI, Lovett's in Hastings, and now Tyson in Lexington. Cold conditions and shoulder to shoulder in the plant is the accelarant. 

    • Like 1
  3. 8 minutes ago, Hate said:


    This is some meaningful information. This means there won’t be a bacon or steak shortage, right?

    Shouldn't be for now. Assuming we can keep plants running at these levels we won't back up too bad, and the biggest thing will be re-orienting food service into retail channels for the time being. In Nebraska, they're now allowing restaurants to sell food out of storage as groceries to help the stranded food too.  

  4. For your livestock update, cattle packing plants fairly level with yesterday around 80% of capacity with Cargill cutting a shift in Colorado on top of the other issues. Hogs were inline with yesterday at about 85% of capacity, so we are holding up much better after the big down day on Monday. Beef values are still moving higher, while pork has remained pretty flat. 

    • Like 5
  5. On a bacon note, belly values are up 16 bucks over the last 5 days, but remain very cheap for this time of year. The rebound in run rates was good news today, but will need to hold for the next few days to make everyone feel better. My hunch is that some of the slowdown is semi-wild cat strikes, and the packers are going have open their wallets to keep it going.

    • Like 1
  6. The meat packing plant outbreak in Nebraska has been blowing up, the county it is in has tripled cases in 4 days and is almost caught up to Omaha at this point. The local has hospital has its tent ready, and has rigged up spare vents after filling up the regular ones and transferring where it could. https://www.omaha.com/livewellnebraska/our-resources-are-being-tested-grand-island-hospitals-icu-is-filling-up-fast/article_b2d1cf40-c2b1-5688-8059-af65a0cdd330.html

    • Like 2
  7. 2 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

    So in all  honesty what does opening up the country for business really mean?  I know even if they open all the businesses, etc... around me I am not about to go hang out at a bar or restaurant.  I'm not going to the movie theater or to walk around the mall or attend any concerts.  I get there are plenty of morons that will do all of these things but there are plenty of sane people that will keep sheltering in place and social distancing so all of these "open businesses" will continue to struggle.  I told my boss I don't care what the President says I am not getting on a plane and flying around the country any time soon and he agreed that he isn't either.  

    Some people think if Daddy says it's ok to play outside, that all the other kids will be out there too magically. 

  8. 16 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Smithfield is also now owned by the Chinese.

    And China’s bought a record amount of pork the last month. JBS(Brazil), and Tyson(Piggy) have major issues too. Cargill has kept it together better than the others so far, but that’s typical for them. The biggest problems right now is big numbers expended a lot ahead of the trade deal/asf and theres not any slack in the system unless Seaboard can pull another shift out of their ass somewhere labor wise. 

  9. 12 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

    Right, herds gotta be getting out of control 

    We really only started to back off middle of last week, and were pulling forward ahead of that, so it’s not critical right now, and other plants are pushing chain speed where there have been less issues.

  10. 17 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

     

    For scale that plant can kill 22,000 a day out of 507,000 national capacity. This plant is getting the pub, but Tyson had a similar sized plant in Iowa go down last week. We also have a fuckload of pork in cold storage. It’s more of a farmer issue than a consumer issue at this point. Same with the JBS cattle plants battling the same issue. 

    • Like 2
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