Happy New Year everyone! As we embark on 2021, I thought I’d take a look back at activity here on the blog in 2020. Unsurprisingly, the five most popular posts from 2020 focused on impacts of COVID-19 on food and agricultural markets:
The second post mentioned above was written on March 16, 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 shutdowns. In that post, I speculated about a potential problem that, indeed, by April and May, proved to be one of the most food-related disruptive events of our lifetimes - the slowdown and shutdown of meat packing plants. After describing why I wasn’t terribly concerned with aggregate food supply, here’s what I wrote then:
“However, there could be more serious food market disruptions. Some of the stock-outs and slowdowns in grocery check-out lines are because employees are staying at home and practicing social-distancing. This problem is likely to grow if more people become ill. So, while we might have the food supply available, will we have the workers to get it to us?
Now, take a step back in the supply chain, and this is where worker issues could have serious issues. Remember all the fervor over the beef packing-plant fire back in August? ”
Overall, there were over 125,000 page views on this site in 2020, and there were about 45 new posts (just under my goal of about one a week). In addition to the new posts mentioned above, there were a number of older posts that continued to attract high attention this year, including:
Where do people eat the most meat? from 2017 (interested readers might also want to check out this 2019 post Food Spending by State)
The evolution of American agriculture from 2016
Real world demand curves from 2016
What do consumers do when the price of beef rises from 2015.
2020 was as busy and stressful a year as I can remember. There was extraordinarily high demand for information on COVID-19 impacts on food and agricultural markets, and it was pleasing to see my fellow food ang agricultural economists featured in every major media outlet this year - including primetime network national news, top cable television news, leading radio and podcasts, the largest circulating newspapers, and more. All this occurred on top of increasing workloads to move classes online (or hybrid), fulfilling research grant obligations, and responding to a spike in research and outreach needs of food ang agricultural groups and local stakeholders. I’m proud of the way my professional colleagues stepped up in 2020. Here’s hoping for a smoother 2021!