With the closure of the 3,700-employee Smithfield pork processing facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota due to more than 200 employees testing positive for coronavirus, a new fear is building:  are we going to run out of meat?  Or food?  I mean, toilet paper is one thing; bacon is quite another.

             Vegans and vegetarians are probably dancing in the streets, but for folks who know the nutritional superiority of meat, this poses a real problem.  Other plants have also closed or are rumored to be planning to close:  at least one poultry plant and one beef plant.

             This one Smithfield plant processes nearly 5 percent of all the pork in the U.S. and services 550 factory farms.  Folks, it's hard to appreciate the size of a 3,700-employee pork processing plant.  I don't know the numbers or pounds going into and coming out of this plant, but it's many, many tractor trailer loads a day.

             If only one common thread runs through this whole pandemic, it is the vulnerability of concentration.  Here on the farm, I've developed a completely non-scientific formula for immune stress in livestock.  It's simply observational, but here is my formula:  density X time X mass = stress.  This stress encompasses all stress:  emotional, physical, social.  And yes, animals have all of these.

             Whether it's concentration of wealth (1 percenters), politics  (socialists), power (corporate-bureaucratic complex), people (packed urban setting), animals (factory farming),  information (censorship) and others I've missed, it's all unhealthy overall.  Decentralization creates forgiveness and wiggle room in many areas.

             A pork processing plant like this does not service our farm; we get service from a small facility in Harrisonburg that employs about 20 people spread throughout more floor space.  The difference between stress vectors comparing a 3,700-person plant versus a 20-person plant is hard to imagine.  Which is why we would have a healthier system if we had thousands of small plants versus a handful of extremely large plants.

             The hot spots are urban, not rural.  While rural areas are not immune to coronavirus, they're a lot different than urban areas in vulnerability.  Some urban folks have told me that one result of this outbreak will be a renewed desire of people in urban settings to get out--anywhere.  Now that we're putting so much emphasis on working from home, perhaps employers will be far more open and innovative toward a non-concentrated work environment.

             These large meat packing plants are cold and damp, the perfect environment for pathogen spread.  Compare that to outdoor processing like our great-grandparents did and they had a much safer system.  Furthermore, remember that these 550 factory farms sending their hogs to this plant are in a real pickle.  The pig pen scheduled for today can't go, which means the pen below it can't be moved over, which means the pen below it can't be moved over--you get where I'm going?  Meanwhile, thousands of pregnant sows are farrowing up at the front end of the system. 

             The breeding farms are expecting the grow-out barns to have receiving capacity for the new pigs in the pipeline.  Having to keep the slaughter-ready pigs an extra couple of weeks adds feed and labor costs, in addition to clogging up the pipeline.  You think you've got it bad when your toilet backs up?  Let me tell  you, a backed up pig factory is a much bigger nightmare.

             As grim as all this is, the devilish smile in me can't help but wonder about the industrial food system collapsing and hungry people being excited to be serviced by on-farm processed pork, hang the plants, hang the inspection, and spread it out over the countryside like a century ago, but with modern stainless steel, hot water, and refrigeration.  Now wouldn't that be a hoot?

             If you could UN-concentrate one thing, what would it be?