Eastern Iowa Farmer Fall 2020

coronavirus
Monday through Friday
and a few hours
on Saturday.
“That usual 0.4 on
the weekend has been
upward of 0.6 or 0.7,
and that’s really contributed
to increasing
that operational
capacity,” Schulz
said, adding it takes a
tremendous effort by
the labor force.
But getting the cycle
back on track will
take time, he noted.
“Prices are being
pushed down and
pressured by the
sheer backlog of
hogs. That’s a factor
that is going to
play out for a few
months,” Schulz said.
“The hope is that
this year stands out
as an outlier and that
we get some demand
pull and a return to
normal for production,
processing and
pricing,” Schulz said.
Coming into 2020,
pork producers were
expecting higher
prices and production
to be driven by an
increase in demand.
The bright spots
right now, Schulz
said, are the Phase I
trade agreement with
China, the United
States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement and
U.S.-Japan Trade
Agreement.
“All of those were
providing optimism
in the market. Those
aren’t going away,”
Schulz said. “But
with COVID, I’m not
sure what will happen
to the demand
situation, but the
hope is that we can
get back to that.” n
BY Nancy Mayfield
eastern iowa farmer
Before COVID-19, Donny Schroeder
would load his truck every day of the
week with cattle or hogs from local
farms destined for meat packing
plants in Iowa and Illinois.
But when the Tyson pork plant in Columbus
Junction temporarily closed in early April after
a coronavirus outbreak among its workers, it
marked the beginning of a series of closings and
slowdowns that would bring livestock hauling to
a crawl.
For most of May, Schroeder drove his truck just
two days out of seven.
“Things have just been screwed up. Things are
a little different right now,” he said referring to
the market disruptions the pandemic brought to
Dennis
Schroeder
DeWitt
Dennis Schroeder
stands by one of
the rigs operated
by the DeWittbased
trucking
company he
started in 1980.
Eastern Iowa
Farmer photo /
Trevis Mayfield
The long haul
Closed meat packing plants tighten capacity,
putting livestock haulers in park
the agriculture industry.
He spoke about it on a cloudy, gray morning
in late May as he prepared to help load 38 cows
from Krukow Brothers Farms in Camanche. He
would transport them that morning to the Tyson
plant in Joslin, Illinois.
“It will be nice to get things moving again,”
he said, just before he hopped into the cab and
backed the trailer up to a loading shoot that would
funnel the cattle into the truck.
In April alone, key Tyson plants in Columbus
Junction, Perry and Waterloo, Iowa Premium
National Beef in Tama and TPI Composites in
Newton temporarily closed amid outbreaks.
Plants in South Dakota, Minnesota, Pennsylvania,
Colorado, Illinois and elsewhere also closed
for days or weeks, while others experienced
eifarmer.com fall 2020 | Eastern Iowa Farmer 67