I got yet another email from a direct market farmer friend today who has struggled with sales for several years and suddenly can't keep up with demand.  This is consistent throughout the U.S. and even Europe.  They're going through the same thing.

             Every local marketing farmer I know is having the best marketing month of their careers, even with restaurants being largely out of the picture.  It's like we all woke up in fairy land.  People who never gave us the time of day are buying authentic local food.

             Yesterday for the first time in many months I happened to be in Kroger's and suddenly saw what all the fuss is about.  Never in my lifetime have I seen such empty shelves.

             So like Dr. Phil, I want to ask the food chain "how's just-in-time inventory workin' for ya'?   It's not.  The reason for the sudden flood of sales in local food is because farmers like us in the local food space stockpile  We stockpile for seasonal fluctuation because we're subject to weather.  We don't just assume that when the snow blows we get stuff from South America.

             We have to prepare for the up cycles and down cycles, take care of our customers year-round, think long term even when our customers don't.  When a sudden re-route of food happened, moving food from institutions and restaurants to the retail trade, the glitch completely confounded the sophisticated techno-glitzy industrial food chain.

             Where were the stockpiles of food?  Right here in thousands of farms around the country.  While we small and local-market farmers like to turn over our inventory, we appreciate stockpiling.  It's part of what we do.  We can't pick and pack from unseen distant warehouses whenever we have a glitch.

             The big question all of us ask is will this stick?  Or is this just a cruel April Fool's joke on local provenance?  Do farms like ours dare to think that this could be the harbinger of better days ahead, or is it just a flash in the pan and everything will go back to previous normal when the panic subsides?  That's the question all of us are struggling with right now.

             If it sticks, we're all ready to ramp up production.  I know almost no serious local-oriented farmer who doesn't yearn for a few more sales to ramp up.  In fact, many need a handful more to quit that town job and stay home.  Do we farmers dare hope this is a catalyst to move consumer awareness for years to come?  How fickle is the retail customer?

             My completely unscientific sense is that we farmers are split about 50/50 on this question.  About half of us think things will never the same and the other half think this is a complete aberration that will be business as usual as soon as things pass.  I hope that millions of folks realize that we local farmers had the stash, that our shelves were not bare, that we bailed out our neighbors when the chips were down.  When the big techno-glitzy outfits struggled, we had the goods.

             Will society play us for April Fools, or will society reward us with loyalty?