PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The pandemic caused a lot of people to realize local food is important, and to prioritize buying fresh food from area sellers. That was a bit of a silver lining for farmers.
"I believe that the local farming community has come out of the pandemic fairly well," Jacqueline Ricotta, professor of horticulture at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, told the KYW Newsradio In Depth podcast.
"Farms had to - and I'll use that term pivot that everybody seems to use during the pandemic but it really was true. They had to change, and everybody had to start up with an ordering system."
Ricotta said it didn't take long for farms to set up online ordering and pickup. Her experience is in the Bucks County and Philadelphia area.
"I have not heard of any farms going under because of the pandemic," she said. "If anything, farms are realizing that they need to produce more. Farmers markets have been open, they've been busy."
Ricotta said farmers who set up online systems were ahead of the curve.
"Rather than the customer going to a farmers market and browsing and picking out their head of lettuce, now the customer had to log in and choose, 'I'll have three heads of lettuce and I'll have one bunch of beets and two bunches of radishes,'" she explained.
According to Ricotta, farmers' success will only continue. Some are coming up with plans to stay open through the winter.
"There's always room for more local farms, whether it's produce, whether it's dairy or whether it's meat. The demand for local grass-fed meat is through the roof because people are once again realizing how healthy it is and important it is to support the local economy," she pointed out, "and it just tastes better."
Moreover, the professor believes technology is the future of the industry.
"For example, drones to scout your field," Ricotta said, "using robotic weeders to take out weeds. That's the type of thing I'm hearing and reading about."
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