Your Food System Is in Jeopardy
Despite what many would like to believe, your local farmers markets and regional food systems are not immune from the impacts of COVID-19. Last week in Dishing the Dirt I asked customers not to be a Covidiot, but there were those who either didn’t read the blog or the COVID-19 protocol signs placed throughout the markets. These were the people who came with their companions, their children, their dogs and then thumbed their noses at market staff and vendors when asked to please follow the rules.YOU ARE PUTTING EVERYONE IN DANGER OF LOSING THEIR FARMERS MARKET OR WORSE, GETTING SICK. Don’t believe me about being shut down? Check out what happened to Fisherman’s Wharf last week when the Covidiots refused to follow the rules.You know what happens if one of your farmers or their workers comes down with COVID 19? They’re not going to be going to market for several weeks or worse, never again. Many of the vendors have implemented to procedures to reduce their risks—wearing masks and gloves, contactless credit card readers, online pre-ordering, and pre-bagging items that are normally loose or exposed. All this has come at an expense to us not only in financial terms, but in time. Chatting with fellow vendors these last few weeks I’ve found we are all spending significantly more time preparing for markets and retooling our businesses. That’s time away from farming, a loss of personal time with our families and increased labor/equipment costs.In addition to the Covidiots at market last week, some of the neighborhood residents have expressed very strong opinions about the market continuing to operate. Central Farm Markets continues to be proactive in safety procedures in order to remain open to our patrons. Beginning this Sunday there will be restricted entry where only a limited amount of people will be allowed to shop at the market at a given time. All vendors will be required to wear masks and gloves. If the rules are not followed, both patrons and vendors alike will be asked to leave. As open-air farmers markets around the country are being closed, last week Central Farm Market in conjunction with Geppetto Catering launched Farm to Fridge Delivery Service to prepare in the event this happens to our markets. The response was overwhelming, literally.Fair warning—if the markets close completely and farmers are forced to move to an all-delivery model you can bet on the cost of your groceries increasing as much as 25%. I know that’s going to be hard when many people are furloughed from their jobs or their businesses are closed, but how would you respond if your boss told you that your work would increase five-fold without any compensation? The price of fuel may be falling, but people need to be paid for their time spent packing and delivering.Yes, I want people to have access to locally grown foods, especially during a crisis, but I also want the customers who have come out to the market week after week, year after year in all sorts of weather to have access. You see, for me the farmers market is not about the blind capitalism of the industrial food system but building relationships and trust within the communities served.That’s why I’m sounding the alarm for customers now. In the coming months, our food system is going to become even more stressed. Over the years I’ve witnessed many interruptions to the national food supply—the Northridge earthquake, September 11th, flooding and droughts, foodborne illnesses, Newcastle disease and massive wildfires. It’s one thing to go to the grocery store and find there is no Romaine lettuce on the shelves, but it’s another thing when all the shelves are bare everywhere.We are in the beginnings of an interruption to the national food supply like we’ve never seen before. Dairy farms are dumping tanker trucks of milk while store shelves are devoid of cartons. I know this sounds crazy, but our industrialized food system is so finely tuned that the slightest disruption sends waves far beyond what most consumers understand.Labor-intensive farms are struggling to find seasonal workers not only due to more restrictive immigration policies here in the United States, but because other countries are shutting down their borders meaning no one gets out. And if you think out-of-work Americans are going to step into to do the backbreaking physical labor of agricultural work, you are woefully mistaken. This will ultimately translate into less planted, less harvested, less on store shelves.Recently, an outbreak of COVID-19 forced one of the largest finished beef processors in the northeast to shut down. The JBS Souderton plant slaughters 2,500 cattle every day. That’s a lot of meat that’s not going to be in grocery stores’ meat cases.Where do you think people are going to go when there isn’t any food on the shelves at the grocery stores where they normally shop? You guessed it—the farmers markets.Over the years I’ve sold at markets in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. As markets grow in popularity, vendors have been able to adjust their production from season to season, but it’s much more difficult, if not impossible, to double or triple production over a period of a few weeks or months. For instance, many of the regional meat processors who service many of the market vendors in the northeast are booked solid until August if not further into the 2020.When delivering livestock to one of my processors a few weeks ago, the plant manager told me of a farmer who demanded to have forty extra head of cattle processed in a single week to meet his increase in orders.“Add another shift,” the angry farmer demanded. But it’s not that easy. First, there is the issue of labor. You can’t hire anyone off the streets to walk into a processor and get right to work. It’s dangerous and demanding labor so asking workers to commit to double shifts or unending overtime is also not going to happen. Then there is the issue of having access to a federal inspector—an absolute must. Anything over an eight-hour shift is billed to the plant at $85 an hour, if you can get one. FSIS is going to deploy their inspectors to shifts at industrial plants before the smaller regional plants.Similarly, fruit producers can’t just grow more fruit as much of it comes from trees and canes that take years to bear a crop. And then there’s the issue of limited land. If you have a hundred acres of land, you can only grow a hundred acres of crops.Years ago I had a nasty neighbor who would harass me over a single chicken who liked to cross the road and lay an egg under her immaculately groomed Japanese Maple tree by her front door. In one of our heated exchanges I told her that a day was going to come when having access to food meant knowing a farmer. Well, that day has arrived. I bet she misses that chicken now.