A short thread on one of many, many weird things Coronavirus is doing to our supply chains – and so to how we live. For farmers, one of the big problems they're now facing has the joyous name of: carcass imbalance.

Here's what that is.

We ate a lot of meat pre-Coronavirus, and we're still eating a lot now. But how we're eating it has changed: we're not going to fancy restaurants, most of us aren't doing dinner parties or big roasts for extended family (if we did it before), but we're cooking at home a lot.

The result of that is a big jump in demand for the cheap cuts of meat – most notably the bits we use to make supermarket mince. At the same time, the stuff that's usually much more expensive, like the fancy steak cuts, has a big drop in demand.

The problem? You can't slaughter half a cow, or only the cheap bits of one. Normally, the different prices and demand for different cuts balances out – but right now it doesn't. Hence: carcass imbalance. To get the cheap mince we want, we're creating a huge steak stockpile.

The result is that we're running out of cold storage space for high-value meat. And the steaks keep coming. It's a real and serious problem for farmers and the industry, who are asking for intervention to make supermarkets or others buy the fancy cuts.

But they don't wants us to get used to super-cheap steak either, because it can't stay that cheap. So you'll tend to find some steak (usually not in its standard packagaing) a fair bit cheaper than usual. But not rock-bottom.

Just one of MANY of ways Corona's causing a ruckus.

Postscript: if "you can't kill half a cow" isn't in a country song somewhere, it should be.