Iowa is the largest producer of pork and corn in the U.S. As many meat processing plants shut their doors due to COVID-19, demand for pigs plummeted.
The effects have trickled down the supply chain to the farmers who raise hogs and to the grain farmers who supply them feed, NewsHour Weekend’s Melanie Saltzman reports as part of our "Future of Food" series with Pulitzer Center support.
"With meat in particular, you have not just the production of the animals, but you have the demand for what they eat," says Neil Hamilton, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University. "And all of those things are tied together. So if there is less demand for livestock, there's also less demand for the feeds that feed them."
Read the full transcript, or listen to the audio, here.
