WC Minnesota News

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the nation, various industries are struggling under the harsh economic conditions, including those in the farming industry. 

According to Post Bulletin, Ben and Erin Doherty, the operators of Open Hands, a Minnesota farm, have felt extreme negative side effects from the virus and subsequent closures. 

Open Hands was a provider for the Minnesota Public School System, but as schools have shut down they have had no way to keep their conventional approaches to sales of produce. 

Unable to sell over 9,000 pounds of carrots that were previously reserved for the school system, Open Hands packaged the carrots into 25-pound bags and sold them on Facebook. 

"We figure it was over 250 households that either came directly to the farm or organized a drop site in the (Twin) Cities,” Doherty said. "It was a pretty exciting moment for us, and that's still kind of keeping us going, assuming that there's going to continue to be steady interest throughout the summer."

Doherty’s operation sells vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruits to restaurants and consumers thanks to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, which they are trying to increase by 30% this year in order to supplement losses in their normal customer demands. 

While there is much undetermined such as when school will be back in session, Doherty is still planting much of their produce in the hopes that the market will return to normal soon. 

Anna Racer and Pete Skold are also planting vegetables and raising hogs which they sell as pork, but they are relying heavily on the CSA for sales of their product. While selling to CSAs has been helpful for Racer and Skold, they hope to not commit too much to these sales as they want to return to their previous clients as soon as the economy opens up again. 

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is doing their best to support farmers through connecting them to grocery stores that they might not normally sell to.