The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has just published an online “National Guide to Finding Local Food.” It’s a state-by state listing of ag producers who sell direct to retail customers. If you sell fresh produce, meat or ag specialty products such as organic or non-GMO, your listing on this directory can help customers connect with you.

May 3, 2020 By Jerry Carlson — Here’s the link to the master directory:

              https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/national-guide-to-finding-local-food/

The directory includes farmers’ markets, individual farmers, community co-op gardens and a wide array of specialized producers. 

During this pandemic, your supermarket may run short of some food items — even though farmers are dumping milk and plowing up vegetables due to disrupted wholesale systems and closed restaurants. Meanwhile, consumers nationwide are increasingly searching for tasty, toxin-free food with known origins.

Update May 5:  News reports signal that local, small slaughtering operations are seeing a surge in consumer sales to new customers.

We noted earlier that thousands of city dwellers are planning their own gardens this season, creating a run on garden seed. We imagine some farm families are reviving the idea of a garden too. But lining up fresh veggies, or locally raised pork and beef, is a convenient way to assure wholesome, fresh food.

Our family buys beef from a small farm which is non-GMO and uses a local meat processing firm which is state-inspected. We typically buy a quarter of the carcass at a time, and cuts are custom-wrapped to suit our family size. The beef is consistently delicious and tender, and we know the steer or heifer has never tasted GMO grain. 

We also regularly buy fresh juicing greens from a local retail shop called “Barn Happy.” A nearby farm family raises a huge garden and much of the lettuce, kale and other produce flows to local customers through the Barn Happy cooler. 

In winter months, we resort to the local Natural Grocers organic produce section.

Meanwhile we have the best possible garden: Grandson Blake grows a huge array of organic fresh produce with his venture, “Deep Root Acres,” just a short walk from our back door. Since our family are enthusiasts for fresh juice, we run a lot of carrots, apples and greens through our Angel juicer every day. Our home base for two families is on 20 acres, so that’s plenty of room for some serious commercial gardening. Blake also has a 30×72 ft. high tunnel plus a warm greenhouse for starting plants.