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-: (Reporter) When growing demand meets
challenges in the supply chain,
consumers see shortages and higher prices.
University of Nebraska Lincoln, Professor
Erkut Sonmez, studies, the food supply chain and
how to make it more efficient.
He says much of the world is facing
a perfect storm of disruption.
-: (Sonmez) One side, we are having shortage
on food supplies. People are looking for more food.
And on the other hand, we have actually food produced
that is just rotting or
going bad in some containers in some part of the world.
-: (Reporter) Processing and packaging companies struggle
with labor shortages.
Freight rates are skyrocketing. Farmers grapple with
shortages of fertilizer and chemicals needed to grow crops
along with transportation and labor issues.
-: (Sonmez) In terms of farmers,
they have been seeing significant labor shortages and
especially in fresh produce, millions of pounds of
fresh produce are not being harvested.
-: (Reporter) Sonmez says the agriculture supply chain was
built for efficiency, not flexibility.
When a hurricane or pandemic comes along,
it's harder to recover quickly.
Research can identify the problem.
-: (Sonmez) For example,
what if I lose 20% of my production capacity to COVID?
What if, you know, in the next five years,
50% of the truckers retire.
So we need to implement these kinds of what if stets, tests
and scenarios to identify the bottlenecks.
We can then actually direct our efforts to improve the
bottleneck points of the supply chains.
-: (Reporter) Food shortages could impact
the Thanksgiving table,
and we can expect to see higher prices on store shelves
and restaurant menus.
-: (Sonmez) Definitely I expect higher menu prices
on restaurants, higher food prices on any fresh produce or
any pack packaged produce.
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