Truck driver laid off "no more hogs being processed" Chris Niemann talks about the food supply

About this episode

Chris Niemann, a hog-hauling truck driver and farmer previously interviewed at the start of the pandemic, returns to tell Vance he was just told to park his truck — a JBS meatpacking plant he delivered to the night before lost roughly 85% of its workforce after COVID tests came back positive, triggering a near-total production stop. Chris walks through the brutal math: thousands of hogs a day no longer able to be slaughtered, farmers facing per-animal weight penalties they can't avoid as pigs continue growing with nowhere to go, and the resulting grim reality of mass culling and burial pits as the only remaining option for producers. He extends the analysis into secondary supply-chain effects — ethanol production collapsing (crude oil traded negative for the first time in history that day), which cascades into feed byproduct shortages (DDGs) forcing feedlots and dairies to scramble for substitute rations like soy meal, creating new bottlenecks of its own. Chris is notably blunt and frustrated, arguing the response has been "blown way out of proportion" given that he personally knows no one infected, while simultaneously describing devastating economic consequences to his own family and community. He predicts consumers will see the effects directly at the grocery store once existing meat-cooler inventories run out, with prices potentially tripling overnight, while emphasizing there's no actual supply shortage — only a processing bottleneck. The conversation closes on a more hopeful, human note: Chris pivoting to spring planting on the family farm, and both men discussing the importance of checking in on struggling friends and neighbors during a uniquely isolating crisis.

Key moments

• **[00:00:32–00:03:23]** Opening account of the shutdown: Chris delivered hogs to JBS Worthington, Minnesota the night before with no warning, only to learn ~85% of the plant's workforce had walked out after positive COVID tests came back.
• **[00:08:12–00:10:29]** Graphic, unflinching description of mass hog culling and burial pits as the direct, immediate consequence of the plant shutdown, alongside per-pound weight penalties trapping producers.
• **[00:16:00–00:19:12]** Chris's frustrated, candid pushback against lockdown measures — "it's blown way out of proportion... can we please just fricking go back to work" — juxtaposed against his own direct economic devastation, an unusually raw and internally tense passage.
• **[00:21:16–00:23:11]** Direct supply-chain warning: "your pork chop's gonna triple in price overnight" tied to a specific, falsifiable timeline (once coolers empty faster than workers return).
• **[00:25:11–00:27:46]** Technical cascade explanation of ethanol/DDG feed byproduct shortages rippling into dairy and feedlot rationing, illustrating second- and third-order agricultural supply chain effects.
• **[00:29:01–00:30:09]** Chris warns of a coming mental-health crisis among producers, comparing the emerging stress to the multi-year mental health toll already experienced by dairy farmers.
• **[00:34:36–00:35:41]** Pivot to spring planting: despite everything, "tractors are still gonna roll. Plant 2020 is gonna come out one way or another" — a grounding, forward-looking closing note.

Notable quotes

“It's gonna be barrel burial yards in the middle of fields... load the pigs onto a truck and back 'em up to a chute at the edge of a hole and run 'em down into a hole and kill 'em.”

“When word gets out about these plants getting closed down... your pork chop's gonna triple in price overnight.”

“Crude oil traded at a negative number today for the first time in history. How do you come back from that?”