I'm downvoting this because it's a huge claim without adequate evidence. Feel free to cite some sources showing what % of harvests have been missed, etc, and I'll change my downvote.
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Migrants can't make it to harvests because countries/states are locked down. Isn't that literally in the article?
There won't be any sources for a while because this is literally just starting.
I mean 3billion people are on lockdown of some sort globally right now. Not hard to imagine it may be hard for workers to get to farms across borders, or even within borders. CA alone will probably see a shortage of migrants. No, I don't know for sure but I'm speculating that it's quite likely.
Supply chains have also been strained because people have been panic buying for what, 3 weeks now? You can't just snap your fingers and double your supply of vegetables.
So, to put it bluntly, people are sitting on ass and their food crops are rotting in the field?
Even if you do nothing the market will probably fix it: Less food in the markets > high demand drives up prices > higher salaries > slightly lower prices
At some point some people are hungry enough to get a... shall we say... real job?
With some regulatory sanity we subsidize it a bit.
Perhaps we should test and quarantine the farm workers when money stops being an issue.
So in other words, after one famine where a large fraction of the population dies, the market will be better afterwards?
Especially with anti-price-gouging laws - this process is explicit forbidden from happening during a crisis.
nah, the regulators will move in and save us from ourselves.
Regulators might be able to legislate food into existence in counties with strategic reserves, but not all places are so lucky. If there isn't enough calories produced, people would die. Most in low GDP countries which are net food importers.
What if there’s simply not enough food?
You harvest what you grow. If there is not enough food we haven't planted enough.
All we need to do is create an app to pick produce on demand, i.e. the Uber of migrant labor. All the hipsters in SF will flock to the central valley for gig work in the fields - problem solved. (I'm only half kidding. If lots of people are out of jobs and there are lots of jobs without people to fill them, it seems like a no brainer, yes?)
Huh? The un already warned about this.
Also, its also not that simple as stated by op.
Its also a supply chain issue. Which could be worse than anything else.
Drivers getting sick. Cargo ship captains getting sick etc etc etc.
Stuff might stop coming even if available in China.
How do you repair your farmers tech? Especially sometimes it is licked behind a paywall, where you cant just use any wheel. It must be from company xxx.
We will find out soon that those paywalls will cause real real real world issues