(pensive music) - [Frank] Supply chain can mean a lot of things, but what it typically refers to is the groups of people, or companies, or organizations, that take things from raw materials, and transform them, move them from one place to another, and turn them into something else.

There's no such thing as one single supply chain, because they tend to be unique to each kind of product, each kind of customer need, and each group of people that are putting them together.

If we're talking about agricultural products that might wind up meaning a can of beans, including the tin can wrapped around it, or it might also mean frozen products for a grocery store.

Supply chains can be very fragile.

People often think in terms of supply chain failures, especially being like a stack of dominoes.

One falls and the next one comes down behind it.

You might have dominoes begin to fall in one place, they hit a point where the supply chain share a common member, and suddenly begins to create failures in multiple different supply chains.

Some not even related to the supply chain that began to fail.

(pensive music) Most of us don't notice the distribution systems; supply chains around us.

I mean, they are all around us.

I mean, it's like the Force, right?

(chuckling) Everywhere around us making life possible.

(pensive music) We never know it's there until it stumbles.

And then we can see it vividly.

(pensive music) (birds chirping) (machine whirring) - My name's Ethan Welford.

I'm 29 years old, (gun clacking) and I own a USDA processing plant in Lucedale, Mississippi.

(gun clacking) I basically service farmers in the local area, in the region, to help them turn their livestock, into meat that they can sell at restaurants, grocery stores, farmer's markets.

More people are getting off of industrial food chain beef that comes from the five packing houses in the Midwest, and then they're relying more on their local source of meat.

A lot of times farmers will bring a cow in and half of it's going back to their family, and the other half is going to their in-laws, or going to their grandchildren.

And they do that every year.

It's part of their culture, it's part of their heritage, they grow up, and they eat meat solely from things they raised themselves.

Animals they raised themselves.

- So the meat livestock, specifically think about the beef cattle supply chain, it starts off with the cattle being produced in the pasture, and then it moves through this really complicated, but connected process to ultimately get to where it's a beef on the consumer's plate.

So, in Mississippi, generally starts out on cow calf operations.

These are producers who are raising mama cows, and those cows have calves.

The next stage, it generally goes to some kind of stocker operation, and that stage is where they brings a lot of the calves together.

And then from a stocker operation, it goes to what we call, feedlots.

From there, they're fed for a period of time, or probably 120 days or more.

And then, at that point, they are ready to actually be processed and turned into beef.

And it's really at that processing stage where we saw the disruption mostly last year or primarily last year.

- When the coronavirus hit in March, it wasn't until about June that we started seeing the actual effects on our business.

When June hit, the packing houses closed down in the Midwest, and that cut the supply of beef off to the rest of the country.

- [Man] Because of that disruption, there were supply concerns on beef.

And so the markets responded with higher prices.

That's how markets ration supplies.

- It went so high to the fact that most of my local farmers were selling meat that was cheaper than what you can get at the grocery store.

If you could actually get meat at the grocery store.

A lot of times, you just couldn't get it.

- So then you have these cattle producers who are saying, "Okay, well, you know, can I look for other alternatives?

Is there any way that I can process my own beef and sell the beef, versus, you know, accepting the lower prices?"

- So, they're now turning their cows and they're going to local processors.

And that's why we're getting so booked out, it's because everyone is basically getting a cow butchered.

'Cause they were, A scared, that, "Hey, I don't know if beef prices are gonna shoot back up again.

Let's just keep it safe and just fill a freezer with meat of cows that we own."

And everybody and their mother did that.

And it was, and we'd been booked out for 12 months for the past six months.

People, they had a cow, they wanted to feed their family, but they couldn't get it processed, 'cause they couldn't get on my schedule.

And that was the sense where I felt, a lot of farmers felt this, what a sea captain would feel when they're all thirsting to death.

There's water everywhere in this ocean, but none of them could drink it.

And it's what felt like when you're in the midst of a herd of cattle, but you can't get beef.

(birds chirping) I started then realizing there was a food crisis here in Lucedale.

There was a way and access to meat problem.

And, I was thinking, "In what way can I make a difference in my community?"

And I kind of saw, like, beef as a kind of a currency of sorts.

Whereas, like, I don't have a lot of U.S. dollars, but I've got a lot of meat.

Let's see if I can't shake, and move, and change my environment around me with just using this.

(plastic rustling) The moment I recognized that thought coming in, that I can do something, I just went with it.

(thudding sound) I had a unique position, a unique opportunity to actually take an animal and get a lot of meat off of it for little to no cost to me.

What do I wanna do with that gift?

Oh, let's have a blast.

Let's give it away.

I thought it was gonna be a little bit easier to give away ground beef, but it was actually a little more tricky than I thought.

I was just, you know, kind of standing out in the heat in Lucedale, kind of carnival barking, trying to get people to not be afraid of someone who's offering them free ground beef, 'cause no one ever does that.

So, it's kind of a weird thing to be like, "Are you sure you're giving away beef?

Why are you giving away beef?

Is there something wrong with this beef?"

I'm like, "No, it's not a trick or gimmick.

It is just a unadulterated freebie.

(chuckling) Really good, locally-sourced.

I think you'll enjoy it.

Take it to your mama, free beef."

(gentle music) But it was fun.

And we did have interactions when people did come and see that it wasn't a gimmick, and there was no strings attached.

And that they really could take this.

And they just were ineffable.

Sometimes they didn't believe it.

And they were like, "Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah."

It's grass-fed ground beef from here, from Joe Havard out there, Rolling Hills Ranch.

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, one pack for free.

If you promise to give away a pack, I'll give you another pack, and you can give it away to somebody.

You got somebody to give it away to?

There you go, man.

- Thank you.

- The deal was, I give you one pack for free, but if you have other people that you can interact with, if you can give this other pack of ground beef to them, then I'll give you more.

And so I would ask them, say, "Here, you get this one for free, but if you know anybody," and they all know somebody.

They're like, "Yeah, my mother-in-law."

Or, "I'm going to see my mom today."

"I'm going to see my grandchildren, they would love this."

And you not only made a connection with that person in front of you, but you then gave an opportunity to that person in front of you to practice altruism.

And it was really awesome to see that.

And so, you're seeing people, days being made, but also knowing that that ripple effect is going on somewhere in the community was really fulfilling.

You know, giving it freely to anybody who came up was top priority for me.

Anyone who wanted it can get it, it was available to everybody.

They just, they didn't even have to ask for it.

I tried to put it in their pockets.

(chuckling) And so, I think that was the best course of action 'cause you don't know who's food insecure.

(birds chirping) (pensive music) - It's really impossible to fully plan for the disruptions that we saw in 2020.

Now I think it really brought some awareness to just what the supply chain was, you know?

I think two years ago, if you asked the general resident of Mississippi, you know, what do you know about the beef supply chain?

It would have been a lot less than what it is now.

You know, what does consumer demand do as we get back to a more normal pattern?

Is the demand for that type of product, gonna continue to increase or persist like it would've been last year or was last year?

So those are some of the key questions that I think are gonna be important to see.

How they play out over the next decade.

(pensive music) - [Frank] There's a number of things that have adversely affected the food supply chain.

And what we think of most recently was the grocery problems that we had during COVID.

You had people going wild for things like pasta and canned soup during the pandemic, because they didn't know if they were gonna be able to get back out to buy it.

(pensive music) The amount of it they were gonna consume was not that much higher.

The value they put on it; what they got out of it was not something they would have been willing to pay more for.

What they're willing to pay for is the certainty they were gonna have it.

So that if grocery stores failed, they could still get by.

Now, there are some of us who live with the reality that it's not there all the time.

They frequently don't have what they need.

When a grocery store fails in a rural community, for example, they become acutely aware of what distribution is worth.

(melancholic music) (tape ripping) (plastic rustling) (melancholic music) (plastic rustling) - My name is Pandora Redmond.

I'm a registered nurse.

I've been a nurse over 30 years.

I started out back in 2003 with a home care service.

So, throughout the years, I noticed that my senior class did not have food, and it was a struggle.

You know, they had to choose between bad food, medication, or paying their bills.

And food would always be the last thing because they felt like they could get by.

And that's when I started seeing the real picture.

To go to the homes, and actually see them in their place of comfort, and knowing the struggles that they were dealing with.

And I wanted to do more.

So, in 2009, that's when I started Hearty Helpings Food Pantry.

(bell dinging) You got four or five today?

(bell dinging) All right, you have a blessed day.

(conversing indistinctly) We started off serving 50 people a month and we had increased to 200 a month.

When we had gotten up to 200, I felt like that's all we could do, you know?

(melancholic music) We have walk-ins, we serve them first.

And, usually, they come in, and believe it or not, we have people walking two, three, five miles to get food, pushing baskets.

That's why we try to be open every day that we're scheduled to open because we never know when someone is gonna have to walk five miles just to get a bag.

(melancholic music) - Extra Table fundraises in order to purchase new, healthy, and shelf-stable food that we provide for free on a monthly basis to food pantries and soup kitchens all over the state.

We're kinda like the middleman.

So, we are looking and listening to what our food pantries are needing, and then delivering those orders, so to say.

Each month we send three to four, maybe five items, but a lot of each of those items.

So, last month, one of the items we sent was tuna and they got 10 cases of tuna, which was 480 cans of tuna, along with four other items.

Pre-pandemic, Sysco was our one and only partner.

They purchased my food, they warehoused our food, and they delivered it to our food pantries and soup kitchen.

COVID hit, and everything changed.

(pensive music) - Yes.

- [Interviewer] Can you talk about that process?

- Yes, that was kind of frightening because people were, it was just like they would come, and knock- 'cause see, everybody was in a panic because nothing was in the stores or they couldn't find this or that.

Basics like bread, meats, cold cuts.

Think food, the food that people usually will eat, and go by, the quick foods, they had ran out.

We were giving out plastic bags, just the little T-shirt bags with food.

And we would pass out what we had, sharing it along.

For a few, maybe a couple of weeks, it was scary, because we just didn't know.

But we didn't close.

We stayed open the whole while.

And we had gotten up from 200 a month to 200 a day.

We were actually serving six to 800 people a week.

Families, not people, but we probably served two or 3,000 families.

I mean, individuals a week.

But, yeah, it was a lot.

At the end of the month, I couldn't believe, you know, and God had given us provisions, 'cause the food was there.

- COVID changed the supply chain, how our office was able to operate, how we were able to communicate, and interact with the food pantries.

Our pantries aren't able to go to the grocery store, or a big box store, and buy in bulk amidst the pandemic.

And we were depended on, really for the first time, to do the heavy lifting in order to get the food to our food pantries.

Sysco called us one day and they were like, "We have all this food.

You know, it's gonna expire within a few days.

Can you get it?"

Yes is the answer, no matter how difficult the question is.

We moved about 800 cases of food.

We, in one day, one time, filled 13 trucks of food, like, box trucks, like, FedEx, U-Haul-size trucks of food.

We would make sure that, you know, whether it be edible food today or containers of vinegar that could possibly be made into salad dressing at some point, we took everything, and found a second use for it.

We had to make sure that it got to locations where it could actually be used.

- Twice a month, they were delivering 12, 10, 12,000 pounds of food.

We boosted our distribution from, you know, one or two days a week to four.

And then, that's when, you know, we just started growing and flourishing.

People started noticing what God was doing through us.

- When we talk about Mississippi, when we talk about hunger, we're the hungriest state.

Hunger is in your backyard, it's everywhere.

You might not acknowledge it, but it's everywhere.

But it's also- in pockets of our state, the worst in the nation.

It's always good when you've got that partner that you can push, and push, and push food to.

And you know it's gonna be safely managed and people are gonna be fed.

And the most people are gonna be fed.

(conversing indistinctly) - Appreciate it.

- In Pandora's situation, Pandora is a great community figure, and she's a light to be around.

And she's a yes lady, and she'll make it happen.

We could donate so much stuff to her and she could get the muscles around it to get it out the door again once it was in her possession.

Pandora knows how to stretch that food and stretch those cans out in a wonderful way.

- [Pandora] You know, they never missed a beat.

They never said, "Well, we can't get it to y'all because of COVID."

They got more.

I mean, they rose to the occasion as well.

They really was a blessing and is a blessing.

(gentle music) - I hate to even think what would happen to all that food and thousands and thousands of pounds, and over the course of the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of pounds.

You know, I assume it would have gone in the garbage because there was nowhere else for it to go.

Everybody just had to work together.

At Extra Table, in my belief, became that central feature that kinda, that brought the network, that brought the food, that brought the supply chain together, in order for us all to come out on the other side, post-pandemic.

- Everybody know that health and food go hand in hand.

What you eat, that's what you become, that's what you are.

If you're eating unhealthy, your body's gonna eventually break down, unhealthy.

Kids, school-aged children, will have problems focusing in school.

And it's important to have because it's just, I feel like it's a human right, you know, to have quality food.

I would like to see us working together more.

I would like to see people that have received help, wanna give back.

I would like to see children that don't have to worry about eating.

They'll have a place where they can come to, just like, "Well, after school, I'ma go by Hearty Helpings Food Pantry and get a lunch," or something like that, because I want to have service that people need.

Everybody fall.

And this pandemic has really taught us a lot, because some of the most elite, or with the nice bank accounts, everybody, it might not have hurt them as much as others, but everybody felt the wrath of what was going on.

And I wanna have a place where people feel like, you know, "I can go here and, you know, if I need something I can get it, or if my mother need it, I can make sure she has it."

But I wanted to be, like you said, a beacon of hope, a place of hope.

(vehicles zooming) (gentle music) - [Frank] When we talk about strengthening supply chains, there's several solutions to it.

One is to be robust, where we're gonna have so much inventory in so many places, that if any part of our supply chain breaks, it just doesn't matter.

Another is being resilient, which means we can either rebuild our capacity quickly, or we can go to a different supplier rapidly.

No matter what, a resilient or robust supply chain is always a more expensive supply chain over the long haul.

Now it can pay for itself by being able to absorb shocks and keep things moving smoothly, and keep costs down, but at the end of the day, they both mean adding some kind of additional capacity to your supply chain; capacity always costs money.

(gentle music) So you can either have it efficiently, or you can have it resiliently, but, generally speaking, not both.

(gentle music) (pensive music)