The U.S. is facing supply chain disruptions as it enters the holiday season, and the impacts reach far beyond the delivery of gifts and ingredients for traditional meals.
A pair of new online dashboards from Purdue University show the vulnerability of food and beverage manufacturing to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic significance of these industries across the nation.
Jayson Lusk, a nationally recognized food and agricultural economist, and head and Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, led the team that developed the interactive dashboards. They are part of a portfolio of public dashboards created through Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability.
The Food and Beverage Industries’ COVID-19 Vulnerability Index by U.S. States and Counties dashboard quantifies the risks to the supply of these products. It estimates production value that could be lost due to COVID-19 illness among industry workers. The data can be tuned from the U.S. total down to an individual county. A user also can select and see data for specific food and beverage sectors, for example, dairy product manufacturing, sugar and confectionary product manufacturing, and animal processing. The dashboard is updated daily and adjusts its estimates based on the number of reported COVID cases in an area.
The Food and Beverage Industries’ Value Added by U.S. States dashboard shows the total revenue of these industries, as well as their contribution to the state’s gross domestic product, and the number of employees. It also shows the costs of materials, labor and capital for each industry, so that the relative significance of each to the supply chain can be seen.
Ahmad Zia Wahdat, a postdoctoral research associate with the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability, developed the online dashboards with Lusk.
“A goal of the center is to take scattered and challenging-to-process data and convert it into useful information that is easily accessible,” Wahdat said. “The first COVID Vulnerability dashboard focused on agriculture, and we wanted to add the food and beverage industries for a more complete picture in terms of food security.”
