Food consumption and the food supply lines

In the invaluable Conservative Treehouse, Sundance gives a very thorough analysis of our current problems in the food supply chain. He writes in part,

Most people don’t contemplate the bigger issue within the dynamic of total food distribution in the United States. It is a very complex supply chain that has been reinvented over the past 50 years as more people started eating away from home.

The commercial fresh food supply chain, which is 55 percent of total food consumption, is currently stalled. The retail or manufactured food supply (grocery stores), which was formerly 45 percent of food distribution, cannot reasonably generate enough product to compensate for half of the total food supply chain shutting down without radical adjustments to the operation; and those radical adjustments take time to implement.

...The issue is slightly complex; and with two months of manufactured food supply-chain stress; it is now becoming increasingly important to re-open consumer access to the fresh-food side of the aggregate supply chain (ie. restaurants, cafe’s, and food away from home).

Most Americans were not aware food consumption in the U.S. was a 55/45 proposition. Approximately 55% of all food was consumed “outside the home” (or food away from home), and 45% of all food consumed was food “inside the home” (grocery shoppers).

Read much more here.