October is the month of plenty of pork, for a long time was the month for hog slaughtering on farms. Usually this month pork prices are the lowest of the year.
I went to two grocery stores today. Sausage was on my shopping list. Walmart (main instigator of the shortages?) has had more foods in stock than I've seen in years but had virtually no sausage. A few packs of patties or links but no rolls of sausage at all.
Went to another regional chain store. They had more but not a lot. only three or four rolls of one brand. And the price was sky high. It was about $3 a roll a couple of weeks ago. Today it was $4.49.
This store always has pork chops for a great price in October. I didn't look at the prices but nothing was on special and I haven't seen any on sale all month.
Higher prices on any meat isn't a shock but why the dearth of sausage in a month when pork is usually more plentiful than any other time of year?
In the UK recently, the didn't have enough workers to slaughter all the pigs, so they 'culled' them instead. Which begs the question, how did they find people for that?
We are being messed with worldwide.
A lot of meat is sent to China now.
Try a farmer.
Actually, the local butchers here all buy all their meat from local farmers and I'm sure had plenty of their sausage. But I wasn't close to one of the butcher shops today. I wasn't posting this to look for sausage, I was trying, and apparently failing, to make the point that pork should be plentiful at these stores in October.
Didn't Q say something about 10 dearths of sausage?
Flying pigs are hard to catch.
The supply chain is ACTUALLY failing, even globally
Right. That's why Walmart, which usually has a store full of half empty shelves, is now overflowing with food. Except pork.
Tim Poole, who lives about an hour from where I live, the other day was claiming that there's a shortage of pumpkins and there are few in the stores. Walmart had six huge bins of pumpkins outside and two more inside.
China bought the pork company to send meat to China
They bought Smithfield. There are plenty of other pork companies.
Just cause they own the majority stake in one company doesnt mean they don’t have a minority stake in all of the other ones. They are cutting out the middle man to feed their 2 billion people.
The biggest sausage seller by far is Jimmy Dean, which is owned by Tyson Foods. About 4% of their meat is sold outside the US. They're owned by John Tyson, who is not Chinese.
And i fucking hate knowing that and working there. But the fat fucks need to be fed so i did my duty to keep it going. pretty sure my heart is fucked after catching covid working there.
The stores seem to be cycling thru goods shortages.
The shipping delays are across the board. And it's been happening longer than people realize. The trucker shortage is real. So is the container shortage, the shipboard crew/Capt shortage. I have connections to a couple different shipping/logistics companies and boat Capt's, and this shit's been going on since before COVID. The company my brother works for can't keep up be used they're short on both company and independent truckers AND office staff. A buddie's company, who also runs deliveries specifically for Lowe's can't keep up because they're short on drivers. And that company is STILL expanding so much, they're gobbling up whole regions. And that's because Lowe's doesn't have enough drivers. Some locations have none and are sharing drivers from other locales.
The drivers that are left are starting to figure out that they can set the price, not the corporations, so that's playing a part, too. I know drivers that are gonna clear $100k this year for the first time in their lives. And they still have plenty of home time. They've told me that 10-15 yrs ago, they were lucky to clear $50k because there was about double the drivers there are now.
Then about 5 yrs ago, there was a shift. All of a sudden, there weren't enough drivers, containers, routes, shipments, etc. The lockdowns, mandates, and conveniently timed eco laws have just made it all apparent.
And now the "fun" begins.
I've seen a number of places with signs "drivers wanted" for many months around here. And I'm not in a state like California where they're regulating the truckers out of business.
I'm not doubting there are shipping issues, but when a store has lots of everything except one thing at the exact time it should be plentiful, and that's always a big national chain, I suspect they're up to something.
Come to NC. We have a grocery store that has huge meat sales every month. The last time I went, I bought a whole shopping cart full of pork loins for $1.99 a pound. And they cut them into chops for free. They also had bacon, beef, and chicken on sale. It's a place called Family Foods in Gates, NC.
A lot of the meat shortages that may occur in parts of the country is based on who owns the packing plants. The biggest pork packer is owned by China.
Like I said, I'm not looking for meat. My point is not to help me find meat. I found the sausage I was looking for at a smaller chain. The point of my post is that I think the big national chains like Walmart are manipulating shortages.
The smaller, regional stores seem to always have at least some of whatever is totally out of stock at Walmart. I'm guessing the store you're talking about is a small, locally owned or regionally owned store.
The Walmart I'm talking about has about 25 large Evergreen type shipping containers behind the store, bought I'm sure from a nearby inland port. A lot of people in the area buy the used ones from the port. They've had those for years and often have things in stock that take weeks or months to get put out on the shelves. Like I said above, this store for years had empty shelves all over the store. Now, all of a sudden, the shelves are full. Just no sausage.
I think Walmart is irrelevant now. I don't go there. If I want something that local stores don't sell, I order online from companies that do sell it.
Gee. I drive 50-90 miles round trip to get to ANY grocery store and there aren't many. Some of us don't live in towns or cities. You sound like my liberal family members who brag that they never shop at Walmart. But they have five or six other grocery stores within a mile or two of their homes.
We have Food Lion and Aldi's. That's all. And there is nothing within a mile of my house, other than a convenience store that doesn't even have gas pumps.
Nothing within a mile of my house except trees, farms and mountains. I did have three wild turkeys mosey across the road in front of me yesterday. I said I could have shopped for Thanksgiving. No stores closer than 25 miles from me. That's Walmart. If I drive another five miles or so, the regional chain. After driving 25 miles through country roads, I often don't feel much like crawling through town to get to the other store.
And at least at Walmart I don't have to make yet another drive to get to the hardware store or the dollar store for non food items. Believe me, I'm no Walmart fan but I'm no fan of driving all over hell's half acre to shop either. Some of it is probably just enjoying pulling liberal chains when they ask where I got this, that or the other and I say, "Walmart." Then they go into the usual pompous rant. They'd probably faint if they went into Rural King, where I actually found little led lights that clip onto a baseball cap brim.
If I have time, I drive another 15 miles to the town where there are more stores closer together and the butcher shop for meat, farm stand for produce, all close by.
No turkeys here, but we have had deer, raccoons, possums, foxes, and bears in our yard. The back of my property goes to the center of a swamp, so I wouldn't be surprised to see an alligator in my back yard someday.
I hope you know that manufacturers cut corners on the products they send to Walmart in order to meet Walmart's price demands. I know of a guy who bought a printer there. It was a name brand. It was lacking an advertised feature. He called support, and they told him that the ones they sent to Walmart didn't have that feature so they could meet Walmart's demands. So he was SOL.
The only major shopping centers in my general vicinity are in the next state and around an hour drive each way. It's over a hour for me to drive to a store where I can pick out clothes that I can wear. I went in a Walmart once, and the only thing they had that I could wear was socks. I also have to drive an hour to get to a book store.
No alligators but all of the above plus weasels. I have my own swamp too but nothing bigger than snakes and turtles in there. The bears here are a PITA. A neighbor finally got a bear dog to chase the last one over the mountain.
I don't buy things like printers from Walmart. I usually mail order anything like that. Same here for malls, clothes, shoes although we do have TJMaxx about an hour away and I shop there a lot. And an orthotic shoe store because I have to have good shoes or I can't walk. That's another reason why I try to cut down the number of store stops. Too much walking and I can barely make it back to the car.
I can't buy socks at Walmart. Mis-sized Chinese junk that one sock fits and the other would fit a five year old. I rarely buy paper books any more, I use a Kindle, donated all my books to the library. Saved lots of space used by bookcases. The Kindle is easier on my eyes and I can change the font size. I'm probably a lot older than you.