From Local Farmer to Your Table
Calvin and Mallory McConnell picking apples on their farm, which dates back to 1787.
Forging Forward is a series of eight articles about our region’s recovery and resiliency in the time of COVID, presented with the generous support of the Pittsburgh Foundation. Read about their upcoming 2020 Critical Needs campaign, which culminates in a day of donations on August 19, 2020.
So many things that were taken for granted in a pre-Covid19 world are now being viewed as luxuries from another time. Feeling more distant and luxurious than ever is the idea of sitting indoors at a restaurant--sans mask--and enjoying a meal with friends, complete with libations.
This major shift in everyday living has altered so many livelihoods thanks to shutdowns, partial shutdowns, and interruptions in food distribution and supply chains. Local farms who depend on restaurants for much of their income are reeling. How does our region continue to feed communities? Who is buying locally sourced produce, dairy, and meat? Can local farms fill the void that disrupted supply chains created due to the pandemic?
There is a way forward, but it will take all of us to activate.
“It’s like coming back home, so to speak,” said Don Kretschmann, co-owner of Kretschmann Farm, which focuses on organic, local produce and community sponsored agriculture (CSA) delivered to your doorstep. As they analyzed their practices in providing wholesale goods to grocery stores and regional suppliers in March when the pandemic began hitting food supply chains hard in the Pittsburgh region, they became inundated with requests for CSA subscriptions.
“People are reevaluating,” he said. “I look at it like a family. When push comes to shove, you can count on your local food producers. Hopefully that will stick around and people will realize that long after this crisis,” he added.
Becky Kretschmann, Don’s partner in both life and on the farm, noted that people weren’t used to seeing empty shelves at the grocery stores or a backorder of items normally available. While it scared some into stocking up, another challenge was presented for others.
“Yes, we’ve seen an uptick in people signing up for our CSA boxes, but some have had to cut back on their normal amount. They feel like they have to really watch their money. You can’t cut back on rent or mortgage, but you can cut back on food. This issue is multi-pronged. You have the consumer who can’t afford the amount of food like they did in the past, and you have the suppliers with no restaurants to provide produce to. It really changes how people look at this entire infrastructure,” she said.
Because they are a local provider of fresh produce, they have created a system within their CSA distribution to assist families and those who suddenly find themselves unable to afford produce.
“Most farmers give to food banks, are pretty generous and give whatever they can. We’ve always looked to ourselves as serving the communities with good foods and don’t look at it as a business,” Becky said.
They have instituted a program that allows their community members to sign up if they lose their job or can’t afford produce. Others can donate CSA boxes to those in need. “When was the last time you walked into a grocery store and they floated you if you came up short?” Don asked.
Covid-19 has exposed the fact that many people were teetering on the brink of financial ruin, and that national supply chains were unequipped to deal with something like a pandemic, which in turn wiped out crops and caused waste in vast quantities around the country.
Farmer Calvin McConnell has seen history repeat itself, reflecting on how his family farm, which dates back to possibly 1787, made it through the Spanish Flu of 1918 and now this. “We hunker down. It’s stubbornness that has seen us through the hard times, and it will get us through these times, too,” he said. The difference now, he sees, is how people are shopping for their food.
“People used to shop seasonally. Load up on produce, freeze them, can them… but now everything is about convenience. You can get whatever you want, whenever you want it, so people are just not as educated as to what farmers have to do to get food to the consumers,” he said. McConnells’ Farm & Market, known for their peaches, has always focused on the direct to consumer market and he worries that as time progresses, more local farms will be lost.
“There is this quote by farmer Victor Davis Hanson on our chalkboard that reads: ‘The family farm in America has all but vanished. And with it we are losing centuries of social and civic wisdom imparted by the agrarian life…’ ” When we lose local farms, we lose whole communities,” he said.
And education is key. Chris Kubiak, of Timber Wolf orchard in Mercer County will start selling Westsylvania Cider soon and agrees that if we continue to lose farmland, the collective knowledge of farming practices, history and cultural ties to our land and communities will also degrade.
“That is the human aspect,” he said. “But from an environmental perspective, farms provide green space and habitats to wildlife. If we lose habitats, we lose birds, we lose pollinators, we lose multifaceted parts of our communities. We must support our local providers of produce, dairy, meat, cider… all of it,” said Kubiak.
Unpacking meat from plastic wrappers, picking out strawberries from a store bin instead of a farm stand changes the ways in which we relate to our environment, to one another and to food.
“If there ever was a sign to go local, this was it,” said Cavan Patterson, owner of Wild Purveyors, founded in 2009 which supplies Pittsburgh's restaurant industry and grocers with wild, exotic, and seasonal foods, in addition to regionally sourced foods from exceptional farmers and outstanding producers.
Normally, goods are produced at point of origin, sit at distributors for days or weeks before being sent out to possibly another distributor before hitting the grocery stores. “We cut out ninety percent of that,” said Patterson. “I think there is inherently less potential for disruption this way. I’d love to see a world in which our model was instituted across the country. Instead of major chains and factory farms, you’d have small, regional distributors which can help provide fresher, more nutritious foods,” he said.
Jason Oddo, owner of Bitter Ends Farm Co., also noted the dangers of relying on a national food supply chain. “The first thing you notice about the national and homogenous food industry is that it has no preference or doesn’t care about the area you live in. Capitalism does what is best for business,” he said.
For example, this year there is a statewide sweet corn shortage. “People are losing their minds. When Covid-19 happened, the industry depended on migrant labor and the farms had no one to pick it. So it’s not available. It really does impact us. The effect can’t really be felt until something we depend on disappears,” he said.
He echoed the sentiment of other local farmers, stressing the importance of buying from farmers’ markets, locally owned grocers that work specifically with local farms, as well as visiting and interacting with local farms in your region.
Besides committing to purchasing produce from local farms, Desiree Sirois, co-founder and co-owner of Fallen Aspen Farm believes that Americans have to rethink how they interact with the food supply chain entirely.
“Americans want fast, cheap and easy. When it comes to food, we often rationalize why we spend less, but really, it costs us more to engage with the system this way,” she said.
She suggests growing your own vegetables if you can, and purchasing meat as a delicacy, not a staple. “I know we run a livestock farm, and I know other farmers may not like it when I say this, but Americans need to eat less meat.” Think quality, not quantity. “If you do feel the need to eat meat, take that seriously and respect it. Purchase from a place that respects animals. I got into this type of farming because I feel really strongly about that,” she added.
She also recognizes that “farming has been traditionally a white man’s world.” If we want to save local farms, we must support all types of people from all walks of life to reconnect to the land and provide aid for local farmers to thrive, including help with grant writing and networking opportunities to learn from one another.
“I can count on one hand how many women I know that farm. I know even less Black and brown farmers. We need to not only educate ourselves about our food systems, but also encourage more people to grow food and become a part of the solution from the ground up.”
Please support our region’s farms by visiting, asking questions, and buying their goods. Let us get you started with a list of local farms and farmers markets in our From the Family Farm article.
Other articles in the Forging Forward series:
Home Is Where the Heart(land) Is
STORY BY NATALIE BENCIVENGA
Don’t miss a single forward-looking thing!