Centre County growers, producers see high demand for local foods amid pandemic. But what’s next?

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way local farmers and producers supplied both restaurants and consumers with fresh produce and other items this spring, with those changes carrying on into the summer months. Some of the changes have been positive, as local growers and producers find new ways to reach customer bases and further demand for their products.

“They’re all seeing a boom. They’re all seeing this high demand for local products, especially in poultry and dairy. Eggs and chicken seem to be very popular right now, beef and pork ...” Appalachian Food Works founder Travis Lesser said of the handful of farmers he speaks to on a regular basis.

Appalachian Food Works is a local nonprofit founded with a goal of connecting small and mid-size regional farms with restaurants. When the coronavirus pandemic first began and many restaurants were forced to suspend business or convert to a takeout and deliver-only business model, Appalachian Food Works was similarly forced to change its approach.

“We had to think quickly,” Lesser said. The nonprofit switched its goal for the time being from providing farmers with business-to-business connections, to offering direct-to-consumer and retail avenues. “As a nonprofit organization and as an organization built to serve the farms in central Pennsylvania, we needed to do right by them.”

Appalachian Food Works began selling inventoried local products on its app, with home delivery. The switch was a “modest success,” Lesser said.

Now that Centre County is in the state’s “green phase” of reopening, he hopes to return to acting as a conduit between restaurants and farmers, while simultaneously looking ahead to the nonprofit’s future. He recently applied for a USDA local food promotion programming planning grant that would result in a feasibility study to uncover how viable it would be and what steps would be required to create a physical, shared-use space that would act as a headquarters not only for Appalachian Food Works, but also Taproot Kitchen, Centre Markets and a new gleaning nonprofit.

“(It would be) an aggregation space, cold and dry storage, commercial kitchen and potentially some permanent market space, so perhaps (farmers) can concentrate on the things they do best and they won’t have to worry about going to market. That can be done for them. That’s what this feasibility study will reveal, whether or not this is a need and if it’s viable,” Lesser said.

Local farmers markets have similarly changed the way they do business in the green phase. Centre Markets recently launched a no-touch subscription service, similar to a CSA, that allows shoppers who may have previously visited the North Atherton Farmers Market in past seasons to pay a fee and receive a regular bundle of items from an array of vendors. The new initiative is a collaborative effort among the vendors, Centre Markets and Taproot Kitchen. Subscription bundles can be picked up under strict precautions that ensure minimum risk of exposure or delivered to subscribers’ homes.

Even without these extra precautions, though, farmers are touting the safety benefits of buying local.

“The safest food is local food, as it’s only been handled by the farmer,” said Mark MacDonald of Bee Tree Berry Farm. “The folks in Centre County are fortunate to have so many options to shop at several farmers markets throughout the week.”

Bee Tree Berry Farm has also adjusted to safely serve customers, particularly with its “u-pick” operation.

“Typically folks will bring along their own basket (or) container to pick into. This season, to eliminate any chance of contamination in the field, we’re asking them to pick into quarts which are provided by us and are carried to the field in a sanitized plastic flat,” MacDonald said. “Also, we’re asking pickers not to sample our berries while picking.”

MacDonald said Bee Tree Berry Farm is currently on par with past seasons, in terms of traffic counts.

Lesser, however, notes many of the farms that work with Appalachian Food Works, who are experiencing current high product demand, are uncertain about the coming months and next year. Questions like, “How can we plan for the future?” and “Will demand remain once the pandemic is over?” arise.

“Business is good right now for a lot of farms, especially as we’re in the growing season, but depending on how this all shakes out, what does that business look like at the other end? That’s the biggest question I’m hearing from the farmers and that’s the biggest question I have myself,” Lesser said.

The best thing community members can do right now, he advised, is to support the local food supply chains.

“Reach out to your local butcher shops. Look for the farm stands. Go to your farmers markets. Support those that are feeding us, directly,” he said. “Shorten your supply chains. There is no meat shortage here in Pennsylvania, you just need to know where to find it. Support the local restaurants that in turn support local agriculture and local food.”

This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 9:55 AM.