Welcome to Another Voice, my guest column here in Wallaces Farmer as I fill in as editor for a couple of months as we find someone to take the reins of this venerable publication. Turns out that's not always so easy, but we'll find someone soon.

For now, I'll be acting as editor, so if you have questions refer to my email at the end of this column. I'm an Iowa State graduate and went to high school in eastern Iowa — Go Vinton-Shellsburg Vikings! I have some understanding of what goes on in the state.

But what's going on in Iowa is happening across agriculture from California to New England. We're climbing out of a pandemic into the teeth of a supply challenge we haven't seen — perhaps ever — in most people's memories. And that's going to challenge you in new ways.

How we got here will be the stuff of Harvard Business Review case histories for years to come. From closed factories in international locations to shipping tie-ups to bad weather in places where key inputs are made, it's been tough. Frankly, you couldn't have lined up more bad things at once to create this scenario.

There's a theory called the cascade effect. Essentially, it starts with a single event, but due to other factors, what starts small explodes into something big pretty fast. It's often used to describe what caused a plane crash — a small part fails, but that was the day maintenance didn't check a different section of the plan also impacted, and for some reason the pilot has a bad day — it all adds up to an accident.

One thing after another

In agriculture, our cascade effect did start with the pandemic in March 2020. The “stuff” hit the fan, leaving us where a favorite math teacher explained was "up the proverbial estuary without sufficient means of locomotion": with sickness and death spreading, factories shut down, and this impacting everything from chips in China to pork sausage in the U.S. But it also meant tires weren't made in Spain or France — even for a short time.

While the pandemic did slow manufacturing, it also brought opportunity for some — whether in government payments or rising prices for commodities that had been in the doldrums for six or seven years. That changed the demand picture; we started buying — tractors, pickup trucks, computer chips, toilet paper.

Factories that had been limited by sick workers and shutdowns found themselves in need of help to catch up with a sudden rise in demand. Then the next part of the cascade effect locked in — a freeze in Texas so bad that it shut down pretty much everything for some time.

This impacted products that are the base stocks for inputs you rely on — herbicides and fungicides, but also latex for tires. One manufacturing company told me they couldn't get floor mats for their new combines. It got that weird.

Then, as some work on recovery stared, the next wave of COVID-19 hit, crimping workers, slowing labor — and frankly, many workers left their jobs for something else (no one is completely sure what), creating a shortage of trucks, longshoremen, waiters, you name it — and the labor shortage crimps plenty in the industry.

More weather in action

The final hammer was Hurricane Ida, which slammed into the Gulf Coast but kept on doing damage right up the coast. In the cascade effect, this kind of piling on is common, and it answers a lot of why today you're still seeing shortages. And for farmers, getting just about anything is a challenge.

I don't have an answer, but observing this unfold over 18 months has been like watching a car wreck in slow motion. I don't know what the final damage will be, but policymakers and business leaders will be forced to step up in 2022 to get business back on track.

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