This year has been quite the roller coaster, and that’s putting it mildly. It was truly unprecedented. What seemed like a promising year quickly turned into a nightmare when the COVID pandemic hit early in the year. Add onto that tensions with equality, the presidential election, and wildfires up and down the west coast and 2020 become a nightmare many won’t soon forget.

There were a lot of things that happened in agriculture this past year, so let’s review the top five moments. Good or bad, they helped to define our year and taught us many difficult lessons. In no particular order, here are the top moments:

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1. The cattle market dive: For the second time in less than a year, the cattle markets took a dive. First, there was the Tyson plant fire in the late summer of 2019, and then COVID hit- which caused restaurants and schools to shutter their doors and demand for beef tanked. As people adjusted to the “new normal” of cooking at home, the demand rose, but supply wasn’t keeping up. Some retailers had issues keeping products stocked on shelves, while producers looking to sell whole carcasses couldn’t get into local butchers. Add onto this a horrible spread of the virus through packing plants, as explained by Progressive Cattle, “Dozens of plants across the country saw closures due to COVID-19 spread. Officials in several states traced hot spots directly to towns with packing plants. Many closures hit in the month of April, leading to a severe pinch on beef and pork processing.
   
   Trump issued an executive order in April making packing plant employees “essential workers,” but many workers still were reluctant to report until conditions were improved by plants. Data collected by the Food & Environment Reporting Network showed at least 536 meat-packing plants had confirmed COVID-19 cases, affecting 48,398 workers; at least 239 meat-packing plant workers died from the virus as of Oct. 20. The bottleneck became a huge disaster where people called for more local packing plants and fewer exports of beef products.
   
   The meat industry really struggled this year, with President Trump and many industry members calling for an investigation into price discovery as well as an antitrust investigation into the big four meatpackers. There were a lot of rocky moments in 2020 for the meat industry, and while things are slowly shifting back to normal, the drama this year has brought won’t soon be forgotten.
   
2. Virtual Industry Events/ Cancelations: 2020 brought on a new way of attending industry events. From your home computer. While this dropped prices and allowed more people to attend than ever before, it also meant that people didn’t get to enjoy traveling to meet peers and colleagues for educational and entertaining events. Some events, though, didn’t happen at all. Take the 2021 World Ag Expo and 2020 livestock shows, for example, many events were canceled entirely, with promises to see everyone in 2021 or 2022. Some of these events hadn’t missed an annual event in many years. The World Ag Expo hasn’t missed an event in 52 years. This affected, and will continue to impact, show animal projects, network opportunities, and business in general as small businesses and makers that aren’t able to sell products at shows where they usually make a lot of revenue. A quick google search displayed lists among lists of events that were canceled or postponed.
   
3. 2020 Derecho: While mother nature likes to rear her head every year it seems, with devastation across the world in various ways, August 2020 brought on a horrible derecho in Iowa, now deemed the most costly thunderstorm disaster in U.S. history, according to the Washington Post. “ the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated damages from the August derecho, which raced from Iowa to Indiana, at $7.5 billion. This includes agricultural impacts that are still being analyzed, so the total may be revised, said Adam Smith, who manages the database. The derecho’s financial toll exceeds that of nine of this year’s record 10 landfalling U.S. hurricanes and tropical storms. The exception is Hurricane Laura, which struck Louisiana in late August and caused an estimated $14 billion in damage.”
   
4. Wildfires in the West: The year began with devastating wildfires in Australia( or did you forget about them)? And while the world was reeling from all the devastation brought by these tragic events, the western states were seemingly having an ok wildfire season. That all changed in August. According to the New York Post, “ California has experienced over 9,600 fires in 2020, with more than 4.1 million total acres burned, 31 fatalities, and over 10,400 structures damaged or destroyed.” This isn’t accounting for the fires still raging in southern California as of December 13th. Ranchers saw total devastation of their grazing land, herds, and homes. Oregon, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, and Colorado also experienced horrible fires late in 2020. Colorado’s three largest wildfires in history occurred in 2020, and according to the Statesman Journal, Oregon’s fires were some of the worst the state has seen as well. “Roughly 1.07 million acres burned during the 2020 season, the second-most on record. The cost to fight the fires was also high — $354 million.”
   
   Progressive Cattle summarized the events perfectly, “According to the National Interagency Fire Center, as of the first week of November, nearly 8.6 million acres in the western U.S. have been scorched by 47,506 fires. While hundreds of thousands of people have been personally and tragically affected, perhaps none have suffered more devastating effects than those ranchers whose entire homes and livelihoods were obliterated. From climate change to improper forest and rangeland management, the causes and blame are many and varied. Western ranchers have been able to take heart, however, in the increased positive attention directed to the use of grazing as an effective management tool in wildfire control and management.”
   
   There are many ways to donate to the families that were affected by these fires, and many will still need financial support for many years to come. The Fresno-King’s Counties Cattlewomen group is accepting donations to the ranching families hit by the Creek Fire, and there are many other groups accepting donations.
   
   To make a tax-deductible donation to the Fresno-Kings Counties Cattlewomen’s 501c3 via check to:
   California Cattlemen’s Association
   Mail to:
   FKCCW
   PO Box 104
   Sanger, CA 93657Z
   Tax ID Number: 68-0352085
   
5. CFAP- The Coronavirus Food Assistance Program was launched by the USDA in May. This relief package, unlike others, Two rounds were released in order to “provide financial assistance to help producers absorb some of the revenue losses and increased marketing costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, CFAP 1 and CFAP 2 made available $30 billion in relief,” USDA stated.