Posted on 04/21/2020 6:20:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
MIDDLETOWN, Md. -- There is an argument to be made that the coronavirus pandemic could change the food supply chain for the long term. It may disrupt across the board our reliance on distant producers, processing plants and large chain grocery stores.
In the process, it would connect many of us to local food in the same way our parents and grandparents were.
For months during this pandemic, consumers who used to drive to the supermarket to buy prepackaged food have instead gotten food delivery literally from a farm to their table. People are getting hooked on direct food sourcing and eating healthier because of it.
Farmers such as Tony Brusco here at South Mountain Creamery are growing their family farms in the process.
Brusco's farm provides fresh milk, cream, yogurt, eggs, butter, produce and select cuts of meat -- all from his farm and other local family farms that have tilled the soil, grown the grass that feeds their cows, milked, churned and prepared everything else they deliver.
While the number of unemployed workers nationwide grows sky-high, demand has been so strong that Brusco is hiring people and has brought along other local farms to share in the profits.
"We're a second-generation dairy farm family that started back in 2001," he told me. "There's four of us total that run the operation. My wife and I run the creamery (or the value-added side of our farm), and my brother-in-law and his wife run the farm side of our operation."
One big problem he sees on the horizon for all farmers is getting the raw supplies and ingredients to produce their food to be sold. "We're at the tip of the iceberg at the moment, and I think we're going to see some major issues here very soon," he says. "Right now egg cartons are super back-ordered. I can produce the eggs, but if I can't get the cartons to put them in, there's nothing I can do with the eggs."
"Same goes with milk," he says. "We use glass bottles, and the company that prints on the bottles is up in Canada, and they are going on a 10-week back order, and they supply all the glass bottles for the country."
Brusco says he is seeing these kinds of raw ingredients getting further and further back-ordered: "My concern is I think if things don't change sooner than later, we're going to be heading into a big problem."
When my parents were youngsters, vegetables were obtained by crossing over to Jersey and loading up while cruising down Route 35. Farm stalls everywhere.
I went to a library book sale with my mom last year and paid 25 cents per bag. Big paper grocery bag. She said it was just like buying veggies on the way down the shore.
From Dad’s people, the vegetables were delivered right to his door by relatives who had more than they could sell. Free chow all season long.
Compare to today’s supermarket prices. :(
If the media and the Dems continue to cause panic and refuse to let people earn a living, all hell will break loose...soon.
We’re doing SO well here in the Batangas Jungle that we have yet to start looking for lizards and snakes, even. And FOR SURE the dogs and cats are safe for the foreseeable future
When my husband was growing up in Arkansas a local farmer would deliver eggs to his mother. He would open up the kitchen door and put a carton of eggs on the kitchen table.
In de Blasio's New York City, it's the other way around./s
True but some of the farms were in the neighborhood. My dad worked on a farm in folcroft, pa. Relatives with farms progressively sold and bought farther and farther away from philly.
Those who are nostalgic for life in the farm economy of yore are going to run smack into the dismal science of economics. Widespread farm-to-table would cause huge increases in the price of food, and far less variety, for anyone who is not now growing his own food. Costs rise exponentially as demands are placed on limited resources that have to be withdrawn from other uses.
Fear not. As the prices rise, mass production will commence straight away.
Those who are nostalgic for life in the farm economy of yore are going to run smack into the dismal science of economics. Widespread farm-to-table would cause huge increases in the price of food, and far less variety, for anyone who is not now growing his own food. Costs rise exponentially as demands are placed on limited resources that have to be withdrawn from other uses.
.......
Fear not. As the prices rise, mass production will commence straight away.
************
We had better fear because farm-to-table, by definition, blocks the mass production that would normally develop to check the rise in prices. Farm-to-table is easier for millenials to talk about than to do. One problem alone is that a whole generation would have to be moved out of the cities and trained to do, and conditioned to like, farm work. The communists tried that in Cambodia after the war in Vietnam ended, and the result was so disastrous that even the Vietnamese communists felt induced to invade Cambodia to put an end to the suffering.
Maybe we should go to the farms and buy. You go to wallyworld and the shelves are empty, except in the automotive section.
Sure, except that farm-to-table prices would be undercut by the nonbelievers. And soon the believers' would stop believing because: $$$$.
I am old, and a lifelong farmer. All my life I've heard my fellow travelers lament that the low prices couldn't last and THEN we'd all be financially ruined and people would be starving because the prices would soar to the moon. As if we'd not notice this and rev up to take advantage of the skyrocketing prices so fast heads would spin.
One great thing about here in Northern California- I can eat, and eat very well, almost entirely locally.
bmp for later
South Mountain Creamery really is an awesome destination. The ice cream is great, and you can take the kids into the barns to see the chickens and up to the fences to pat the cows.
Of course they rotate the crops, but one year I was driving by the huge, hillside field to the right of the dairy store, and they had planted its many acres with clover, which was in full, raspberry-colored bloom at that moment. How I wish I had not been late for a meeting and could have photographed it.
She's also going to find out, just like the local farmers are learning, that democrats refusing to open their economy for business will muck up the supply chain in such a way that recovery becomes impossible.
p
South Mountain Creamery has the BEST liquid blueberry yogurt. I could drink a bottle now......may have to run over there tomorrow.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.