Rethinking food supply: ‘Just in time’ becomes ‘just in case’

CHICAGO — Economist Dan Basse said countries may need to shift their long-term supply to have more food on hand in case of future pandemics.

“We’re not only concerned about food security, but the overall growth of demand,” Basse said. “We’re telling some of these countries that they need to think about having three months’ supply on hand.

“The food supply chain globally was a ‘just in time’ inventory. Now we’re telling clients, maybe it needs to be ‘just in case.’ That’s the thesis we’re now thinking about, at least in the southern hemisphere where it’s late fall going into winter. They need to be careful right now.”

Basse, president of AgResource Co., was the keynote speaker in a meeting hosted by Charleston Orwig, a strategic communications firm.

Basse believes it will take a vaccine before the world economy will have confidence again.

“When I say confidence, I mean confidence to have interactions, confidence to trade freely,” he said. “The Chinese had a problem in the last week here where they had salmon from Norway that they thought was the reason they had a (COVID-19) spike in Beijing.

“These are the kinds of things that worry us. We know that the virus is unlikely to travel on salmon over that amount of time, particularly if it’s cooled, so we don’t think that’s the issue.

“But the Chinese and others have different aspects about food security and their own phytosanitary issues.”