2020 has been a very long reminder not to take anything for granted. Businesses have struggled, production has shut down in a lot of industries, including food. While it’s hard to imagine shortages on our favorite foods, some things may be in short supply in the coming year.
- Beef and poultry – when meat processing plants reopened after the initial shutdown, production was slow due to new protocols. The latest outbreak has only made that problem worse.
- Beer – There’s no beer shortage, but aluminum cans may be in short supply if you like craft breweries. The big dogs, Bud, Miller, etc, has snatched up all the cans.
- Canned soup – So you may have to settle for your third favorite canned soup, as people began hoarding their favorite canned products at the start of the pandemic.
- Canned corn – Corn sales went up 47.6% in Spring of 2020. And since sweet corn is only harvested once a year, it may be more scarce in 2021.
- Flour – as with the corn and soup, there was a huge rush in the spring to buy baking products to make homemade bread and other essentials. Therefore, we could be short in 2021.
- Soda – we could run into the same problem with soda that we did with the beer. No cans.
- Snack foods – many snack companies have had to cut back on the variety of flavors they offer, going back to basics because of increased production costs. These shortages could last well into 2021.
- Spam – No, not unwanted email. You’ll probably still get those. But the meat product made famous by Hormel SPAM, may see a 2021 shortage. Hormel says, s supply chain, staffing and production problems will negatively affect production quantities.
- Yeast – along with the big bread boom came the big yeast boom. Sales for yeast went up 258% and since the holiday baking season approaches, this could result in a shortage for next year.