All eyes are on Russia and producers are wondering what the long-term effects will be. One economist says that we are already facing high costs and labor shortages, so thinking we can produce everything here in the United States is a pipe dream.
However, that does not mean that we can not realign supply chains that have less political risk.
According to Texas Tech’s Dr. Darren Hudson, “We need to rationalize and rethink the way that we organize our supply chains quite a bit, and I think that’s what’s going to be one of the lasting things. I think COVID was already pushing more businesses away from China into other areas of the world that were less politically likely to undermine their business or their supply chains... U.S. agriculture is a little more buffered against this simply because we have a greater diversity of where we send product. So, I think we’re not dependent on Russia as the primary consumer, but we are dependent on China as a primary consumer of U.S. ag products and we probably ought to rethink that being overly dependent on one country or a set of countries that are probably not strategically aligned with the U.S.”
He hopes that moving forward, the U.S. looks at diversifying customers and suppliers for inputs.
Related:
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