Source: Blake Brown, Ph.D, NCSU COLLEGE OF AG & LIFE SCIENCES, Summer 2020



A Pandemic Challenges Predictions

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, many U.S. agricultural sectors were expecting 2020 to be a year of improvement after several years of a depressed agricultural economy. In particular, the promised resolution of trade issues with China led to expectations that exports of many U.S. agricultural products would resume. Further, because African swine fever had greatly reduced pork production in China, the world’s larger consumer of pork, that nation’s import demand for meat was expected to increase dramatically, creating export opportunities for the U.S. poultry and the livestock sector. But that was February. At the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS) Agricultural Development Forum in early February, in my outlook presentation on North Carolina agriculture, I told State Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler and the audience to expect a good year for our burgeoning pork and poultry sector. How dramatically the world can change in a couple of months! The coronavirus pandemic has completely reversed expectations for the agricultural sector. What looked to be a very promising year will now be one of the most challenging years for the agricultural economy in recent history. In particular, trade with China — historically our largest trading partner — is mired in a complicated mix of international politics, the economic impacts of a coronavirus pandemic and a swine disease that in 2018 and 2019 devastated the supply of China’s predominant protein source. How will this mix of forces affect U.S. agriculture in this challenging year?

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