Mackenzie May
August 20, 2020
covid stories
COVID Stories: Central Mass Grown helped farmers connect with customers
By Devina Bhalla
Food insecurity and empty shelves were a large part of the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Many consumers scrambled and panicked about barren shelves and rising prices.
In that moment, farmers were there for their communities, said Mackenzie May, executive director at agriculture nonprofit advocacy group Central Mass Grown in Worcester.
When the pandemic first began, Central Mass Grown took on two charges: first, creating a directory of farms, restaurants, and food retailers still open; and second, working with farms in the area to open their stands and retail options earlier than they normally would.
It opened up its directory listing to all of the food system, membership with Central Mass Grown or not.
“Our purpose was just getting as much information as possible out there to consumers who were visiting grocery stores and seeing bare shelves,” said May.
Farms would usually be transplanting and seeding in March, but turned their attention to opening farm stands in addition to planting in order to provide food to their communities.
“It was really heartening for me and my organization to see the consumer turn to their farmer in a time of food insecurity because that is the truest gift of farming,” said May, “It is a local food food hub for folks to be able to come no matter what is going on in the national food chains.”
May and Central Mass Grown connected farmers with food surpluses to places they could donate it to. However, surpluses were rare.
“In Central Mass., most farmers were selling out once they figured out a way to reach customers,” said May.
For Central Mass Grown as an organization, the spring and summer looked very different this year.
“COVID was a major disruption in our main programming,” said May.
Typically, it holds events like workshops, farm tours, and an annual meeting in the spring and summer, all of which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic.
“One of my greatest joys that I get in my job at Central Mass Grown is bringing the farming community together through networking events, farm tours, technical assistance, trainings, and our annual meeting. Unfortunately we weren’t able to do any of those things,” said May.
Central Mass Grown produces a local farm and food guide every summer, which is a print publication with directory listings, educational resources, and other helpful information for the community. COVID caused it to move this guide to an online platform.
It launched this online verison in early August. The guide includes an extensive online directory with geo-location maps and links to each food retailer and restaurants' social media and website.
Central Mass Grown partnered with other organizations to launch a mobile app specific to Central Mass. for Eat Local Month. This app can be downloaded by anyone and used to find farms and food retailers around the consumer and earn points for shopping at different locations. It launched early August.
The pandemic pushed Central Mass Grown and the industry in general into more tech-heavy programming, said May. The industry had aspired to be more technologically focused, but COVID made it necessary and forced everyone to do so.
Though there have been a lot of positive developments and changes to the industry through COVID, Central Mass Grown relies on state grants and therefore is financially concerned, said May.
“The economic impacts of the pandemic could be terrible for Central Mass Grown’s future,” said May.
In the short term though it has been able to maintain its structure and hopes to continue to do so in the future.
Moreover, May fears consumers who turned to their local farmer or small retailer in a time of need will go back to larger grocery stores as soon as that need goes away, which could harm local food businesses.
“We need to keep the customers coming to the farm stand who turned to the farmer when the grocery store shelves were bare,” said May.
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