The problem isn't with total food supply, it is with the supply chain.
It was designed to serve people getting what they need for 2-5 days of groceries, and even then only cooking one meal per day. Instead people suddenly need 5-10 days of groceries, and they are cooking 2-3 meals per day. Those extra shipments don't just appear out of thin air.
Shipping logistics is an extremely thin margin industry. Lots of automation. Google "Just in Time" logisitics model. A Shipment of eggs leaves the farm one day and arrives at refrigerated warehouse the same day. A few hours later it is already broken up into individual store bundles and loaded up to ship out. Within 24 hours it is on the store shelf. Within 48 hours its on your pantry shelf at home.
Its good for a lot of reasons, but it has its weaknesses. There is almost no storage capacity in the system since things move out as quickly as they come in. Which means the volume is limited to the trucks and drivers on-hand. And you can't go from 100 trucks and 200 drivers to 200 trucks and 400 drivers overnight. There is already a shortage of truckers, and they are in higher demand than ever now.
A system designed to transport 10,000 eggs a day to a small number of restaurants in bulk cannot be converted to 10,000 eggs a day to a large number of consumers in individual packages. Especially since that conversion costs a lot of money, will probably take a month or more, and in another month it will just have to be converted back.
This is why we have stimulus. The system is good and efficient in the long term, but its messy in the short term, and in times of crisis it makes losers out of a lot of people. Government should be insurance against those times.
The problem isn't with total food supply, it is with the supply chain.
It was designed to serve people getting what they need for 2-5 days of groceries, and even then only cooking one meal per day. Instead people suddenly need 5-10 days of groceries, and they are cooking 2-3 meals per day. Those extra shipments don't just appear out of thin air.
Shipping logistics is an extremely thin margin industry. Lots of automation. Google "Just in Time" logisitics model. A Shipment of eggs leaves the farm one day and arrives at refrigerated warehouse the same day. A few hours later it is already broken up into individual store bundles and loaded up to ship out. Within 24 hours it is on the store shelf. Within 48 hours its on your pantry shelf at home.
Its good for a lot of reasons, but it has its weaknesses. There is almost no storage capacity in the system since things move out as quickly as they come in. Which means the volume is limited to the trucks and drivers on-hand. And you can't go from 100 trucks and 200 drivers to 200 trucks and 400 drivers overnight. There is already a shortage of truckers, and they are in higher demand than ever now.
A system designed to transport 10,000 eggs a day to a small number of restaurants in bulk cannot be converted to 10,000 eggs a day to a large number of consumers in individual packages. Especially since that conversion costs a lot of money, will probably take a month or more, and in another month it will just have to be converted back.
This is why we have stimulus. The system is good and efficient in the long term, but its messy in the short term, and in times of crisis it makes losers out of a lot of people. Government should be insurance against those times.