plow under

With the onset of the coronavirus, many farmers were forced to plow under crops or dump their milk, even as grocery store shelves emptied out and many American families went hungry.

This spring, horrified Americans watched farmers dump milk and plow under vegetables, but the story of food waste and the novel coronavirus didn’t end there.

Produce farmers in Florida and California have been forced to plow under ripe vegetables because their supply chains have dried up.

Cooking allows them to process larger amounts of perishable food as the coronavirus sows chaos in the country’s food system, forcing farmers to plow under crops and dump milk, and meat processors to shut down plants and euthanize animals.

With restaurants shuttered, hotels idled and cruise ships docked, farmers were left without distributors to buy their goods, forcing them to plow under lettuce, dump milk and leave onions rotting in fields.