Shoppers face empty shelves
Parts of the United States are now battling food shortages as worried Americans have emptied supermarket shelves amid the supply-chain crisis threatening the nation’s economy and holiday shopping.
People are stockpiling everything from canned goods to boxed items and even making a run on milk when it’s available in grocery stores, Bloomberg News reported.
The surge in demand comes as two major California container ports face a massive, pandemic-related backlog.
“People are hoarding,” Adnan Durrani, CEO and founder of Saffron Road, a producer of frozen and shelf-stable meals, told Bloomberg.
“What I think you’ll see over the next six months, all prices will go higher.”
Vivek Sankara, CEO of Idaho-based grocery chain Albertsons, told Bloomberg that customers should expect they are going to have “something missing in our stores” on “any given day.”
“I never imagined that we’d be here in October 2021 talking about supply-chain problems, but it’s a reality,” Sankara said.
In Chicago, the Dill Pickle Food Co-Op is reportedly short on certain dry goods because two of its main distributors haven’t sent full orders in recent weeks.
Land O’Lakes, one of the biggest farm cooperatives in the country, told Bloomberg it’s producing plenty of milk, but the massive backlog of ships waiting to enter California’s LA and Long Beach ports has led to problems getting dairy on store shelves.
“The challenges in the supply chain continue to be issues such as driver shortages, labor and congestion at the ports,” Land O’Lakes Chief Supply Officer Yone Dewberry said.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) blasted President Biden and his administration’s policies for turning the US into a “land of scarcity” that is placing heavy burdens on families.
“Long a land of abundance, the United States has become a land of scarcity under President Joe Biden,” Hawley wrote in a Fox News opinion piece published Wednesday.
“Store shelves are increasingly empty, the cost of basic goods is soaring, supply chains are failing, foreign imports are backlogged at our ports, and a government-induced energy crunch has driven up prices at the pump to seven-year highs,” he wrote.