FAIRMONT — As farmers across the country deal with an excess of product because of closed-off markets, one particularly devastating bit of news is the effect on the nation’s meat supply.

Stores have begun limiting meat sales and some farmers have begun euthanizing livestock.

Local farmer Wanda Patsche of Welcome discussed how hog farmers in Martin County and across the country are being affected.

“One of the things that Martin County has going for it as far as hog production is that many of us, not everybody, but many of us sell our hogs to Hormel,” she said. “Hormel is still up and running as of right now. I don’t know if they will be two hours from now, tomorrow or next week. We’re all on pins and needles hoping that they don’t shut down.

“Nationwide, I still think we’re going to see more plants that will go down because of the whole situation with COVID-19 and their employees. Having said that, there’s not a website to go to or anybody to call to see if any euthanization is happening within the county.

“I’ve kept some feelers out there, and what I’m hearing is that people are doing all right. Things are a little bit tight, but they’re managing. So there are not any large numbers of euthanization that I am aware of, but I know there are some.

“When you sell a barn, you don’t sell 100 percent of your hogs to Hormel,” she explained. “You always have some tail-enders, ones that maybe don’t quite fit in with the rest of the group. Those we sell to Parks of Minnesota in Welcome or Wiechman’s, so I’m a little bit concerned about what the market is for those.”

Another question that has been raised is whether farmers can sell their hogs directly to consumers. Patsche says it is possible, but they have to sell the live animal.

“We can’t sell an animal and then take it to our local locker and sell the meat,” she said. “That’s because the local lockers don’t have the USDA oversight, and that’s the only way that you can sell meat.”

On top of that, Patsche says most of the lockers in the area are booked well into the summer and middle of fall.

“Probably the number one question I’m getting is why we don’t take the meat to the food shelf, because we have all these hungry people that could use it,” she said. “That’s a fantastic idea, but you still have to get it processed.

“I’d just read that, nationwide, we are down probably 50 percent capacity for processing hogs. That’s significant.

“I do know that Smithfield [in Sioux Falls] is coming back on, but they have 3,700 employees and they maybe had 250 going back. So they’re not ready to slaughter or harvest any animals yet, I think they were just going to do some things with sausage and ground pork.

“I know that JBS [in Worthington] is also opening up, but again they’re not going to be at full capacity. In my opinion, if we get to 75 percent, we’ll be doing really well. But that’s going to be days or weeks down the road and even so, we’re still going to have the pileup from behind.

“Do I foresee some larger numbers of euthanizations in Martin County? It’s definitely possible because all these hogs are coming and you can’t really stop it midstream without doing some sort of euthanization. But we look at that as being an absolute last resort, because this is not why we farm. We don’t farm to raise animals just to have them euthanized; we do it because we want to provide food for people’s tables.”