March 18, 2020 Farm Resilience & COVID-19 in WA State

Full Transcript of Webinar

Vero Vergara:

Hello! 

Welcome to this digital meeting about Farm Resilience & COVID-19 in WA State. This has been organized by a small core team of farmers, with the support of WA Young Farmers Coalition, SnoValley Tilth, WSDA Regional Markets & Food Assistance Teams, Tilth Alliance, PCC Farmland Trust, LINC Foods, Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Market Association, and our amazing panel of farmers: Bil Thorn, Celeste Monk, Beth Robinette, and Amy Moreno-Sills. Technical support and sponsorship for this event is coming from ROAR Mobile Farmstands and core organizers from People’s Hub who are donating their personal time and service to help us pull this all off.  Viva Farms has also stepped forward to provide Spanish translation of panels and key points from today in a written transcript that we’ll send later on.

If you haven’t already, please take a moment to settle in and take some deep breaths. There is a check-in prompt going in the chat window if you’d like to share with the group your name, your farm name, and one way you’re planning to or have been taking care of yourself in these pretty stressful times.

To start the session today we want to call on each of you to acknowledge the land and water that you work with and what it means to be in right and respectful relationship with the Indigenous peoples in your particular place.  Please keep this call to action in your hearts and minds as we engage today and work in community beyond our webinar together. 

 This land acknowledgement was shaped for our event today by several local Indigineous scholars, so thank you to Kristen French and Elizabeth Bragg, who are referencing work by Eve Tuck, and also for giving us a moment to consider our relationships to land and power. 

My name is Vero Vergara, I’m a farmer and food systems community organizer with Sweet Hollow Farm, WA Young Farmers Coalition, and ROAR Mobile Farmstands. I’ll be one of three facilitators helping us along this conversation today. 

In one day of promotions & kind of massive peer-to-peer outreach through our communities, we’ve had over 500 registrations for this webinar session. So we’ve been working hard to keep this gathering farmer-led and farmer-centered This is also an invitation to our communities of service providers and government officials to build space to accept and follow through on farmer leadership. Farmers, we are in this struggle with you. 

We’ve got a great mix of producers and food system folks in attendance today. To give you a sense of that breakdown, about ⅔ of attendees are producers, and about ⅓ of attendees are service providers, government officials, and people listening in from out of state. We’ve got some international representation in the mix as. Welcome to all of you! Let’s begin!

We want to thank you for engaging with our detailed registration form- we know that it was wordy! But the perspective that we were able to gain to collectively address the needs of farmers throughout Washington state is indispensable to how we can organize and move forward through these uncertain times. Thank you.

As our team of organizers has been filtering through the incredible, thoughtful questions you all are bringing to this conversation, we want to acknowledge and honor your honesty and vulnerability sharing your concerns and also the impacts you’re experiencing during the present COVID-19 pandemic. 

Throughout our process of putting this rapid response webinar together, we’ve been very focused on deep listening and your voices are ringing through loud and clear- this is a time when many of us are holding onto anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and pain. In this same moment, we also want to name the common threads of farmers being geniuses who are setting forth to persevere with feeding our communities and building innovative, inclusive networks of care and resource distribution. Those things are very clear to us from your responses. The momentum we’re seeing from our communities of producers tells us that this moment has immense potential to build into a farmer-led movement that has the power to positively change the practices and frameworks of agriculture and food systems in our nation. 

We want to be up front with you all that our team of organizers and our panelists know that we won’t be able to answer all the questions or speak to all the themes that have come out of the registration survey or that are rising up from our communities. We are all here with the knowledge that we are experiencing rapidly changing conditions, our organizers have been working tirelessly to build this container for community discussion and are already exploring what next steps can look like from here. The enormous amount of respect, support, and engagement we’ve received shows us that this session is just the beginning! Please know there is more to come. 

For a brief overview of our agenda today: 

After this welcome and introduction we will be moving straight into hearing from our panel of farmers. 

Farmer Panel - 30 minutes

Breakout groups for some farmer-to-farmer conversation - 20 minutes the breakout groups are optional, you’ll be hearing more about that later

Reconvene for the Non-Producer Panel - 30 minutes

Facilitated Q&A session with questions pulled from chat window - 20 minutes

Re-grounding moment & Close out - 5 minutes

As we move into hearing from our panels, know that we had to produce some very simplified questions due to our limited amount of time together today. We saw three major areas of focus that we’ve pulled into our conversation about farm resilience during this pandemic: Planning, Market Channels, and Support for Producers. 

I’d like to introduce one of my fellow organizers/facilitators who is calling in for our session today, 

Elizabeth Bragg, of Long Hearing Farm and WA Young Farmers Coalition. Elizabeth, thank you for everything you’ve done to pull this together. 

And now I’ll pass this off to Emma and Ari, please introduce yourselves. 

Emma Shorr: Hi everyone thank you all for being here. I'm Emma, I use she/her pronouns. I'm on the board of the WA Young Farmers Coalition, and I run Rising Sign Farm, which is a small farm in its first season going in 2020 in the Snoqualmie Valley. Thank you all for being here.

Ari: Hi Everyone, good afternoon. My name is Ari, I am the Farm Services Program Manager at SnoValley Tilth. And I am also a farmer, I run Kamayan Farm which is fortunately situated right next to Emma.

We're going to move into our farmer panel. We have been combing through all 500 registration responses to try and really distill down what you all are interested in hearing from these farmers. So we came up with these three main questions which we are going to ask all four farmers to respond to. And then we have one question per each farmer that we will ask that is a little more tailored to them.

So the three focus areas that we are asking our farmers to respond to and you can pick which one of these you're thinking about most in this moment or if you want to try and cover all three, you have a few minutes to get them.

So we're asking people

How are you shifting your operations right now given the current conditions?

How are you experiencing and planning for any potential disruptions to either your market channels or your supply chain?

And what support do you need from your community or service agencies right now?

So we are going to start with Amy Moreno-Sills from Four Elements Farm in Puyallup. If you can introduce and say what you all grow on your farm as well that would be great.

Amy Moreno Sills: Thanks Ari. I'm Amy with Four Elements Farm in Puyallup, we grow about 30 acres of row crop vegetables. Primarily for the wholesale market and we have six acres of u-pick blueberries as well.

So the first question, how we're shifting our operation with the current conditions, everything is so new that we're not making any hard fast decisions right now. Everything is business as usual as far as what day to day work looks like. There is the potential to increase production this year, I can see that potential happening, but day to day it's changing so we haven't made any shifts at this point.

The second point for how we're planning for potential disruptions to our market channels or supply chains - the biggest thing that we are concerned about right now are procuring supplies, so those wax boxes that we need for every product, the twist ties, things of that nature. So what we've been doing is we've been getting ourselves into a bit of debt to pre-purchase those products that we need right now so that we'll have them on hand when things become harvestable. We're just now doing our first planting so we don't exactly need them at this time but we will. And that's one our main concerns.

And we're also thinking about labor issues. We're expecting to have less of them this year than we have had in the past five or six years. But at this time everything is up in the air so maybe we'll have a lot of folks looking for work or maybe we won't have work at all. We just have to be flexible like every farmer is every year.

The support that we need from community or service agencies, again hard to tell. But I know I think this doesn't chage from any other year we just have more of a potential to be getting the word out about buying from the local farm, from all different kinds of farms, the direct market, the wholesale farm, just really being able to prioritize that. I think we're in a good position for that honestly, right now. Thank you.

Ari: So in the registration responses a lot of folks are really concerned about food safety in this time, and are trying to think through how we safely deliver produce to our customers. I'm just curious, I know you employ a lot of folks, what all have you been thinking about employing new or different safety protocols and how you've been addressing those concerns.

Amy: Yea, definitely top of mind. At the moment, we're only working with one or two employees and production is light. We're actually just going to be doing our first delivery later this week. And I was going through that in my mind and I think what I'm going to do for that is, when I'm physically delivering the boxes I'll probably wear a mask. I know that's a little bit controversial but I think that's good to protect folks I might be coming into contact with. So that's one thing I'm doing on the personal level. Of course everything is changed, from hygiene and handwashing and things that we all know about now. Thinking about later in the summer when thigns start picking up and we have more employees, we usually employ 8 - 12 folks in the high season, instead of having that handwashing station at the restrooms or only at the break areas we're definitely going to have them set up all around. Even though we do wear gloves to harvest and any time we're working with product and I do anticipate that being an issue as well: being able to procure those supplies. So we're really going to have to be up on the handwashing and people having their clothes, maybe we'll be wearing some kind of protective gear over people's clothes that we can wash every day and sanitize, things of that nature. To be determined but those are things that have been going through my head in the last 12 hours.

Ari: Great thank you so much. Let's jump to Bil Thorn. Go ahead and introduce yourself.

Bil Thorn: Hi, I'm Bil Thorn. My wife and I run Sky Island Farm out in Humptulips WA. And we grow a diverse array of vegetables pretty intensively on two acres right now. Usually we do a mix kind of, we do about 50% of our business is our CSA, we run a 60 person CSA and the rest is wholesale to restaraunts, we work with some hospitals, schools, things like that. And so what we've decided to do this season with all that's happened is focus more on our CSA. We decided since you know wholesaling is going to be slow we re-opened our CSA sign ups and now we're reaching out to other farms that produce other things that we don't produce, meat mainly is what we've already started working on trying to find. So we're going to try and offer more products to our CSA members this year and hopefully that helps us out financially and helps out community.

Ari: Great and that's perfect because our follow up question for you was, as you're working to expand your CSA do you have any challenges on the horizon in terms of capacity? Are you thinking of having to expand your pack shed space or delivery vehicles? How are you adjusting to manage that shift?

Bil: What we've thought about doing is just adding another deliver day. We're not going to get another vehicle or anything like that. We're just going to have another delivery day. In terms of difficulty taking on more capacity in terms of CSA, no I don't think it will be a problem at all because we won't have as much focus on wholesaling. So I think that will free up some time. And in terms of this sign ups, we've actually gotten a ton of interest lately from the community so we feel like it will be pretty easy to get as many people as we need, or as many as we can service this season.

Ari: Thank you so much Bil. We are going to move on to Celeste Monke. Go ahead and introduce yourself, let folks know what you grow and if you could address those three main questions that would be great.

Celeste: Hi I am Celeste Monke, we farm on 8 acres, intensively on two. Primarily on two. I farm primarily with my partner in North Bellingham on Coast Salish land. And how are we shifting our operations...

Most of our sales are based on wholesale and events, so retail from the farm. So that's shifting pretty dramatically right now. We're starting to get our first cancellations. And I'm planning to send an email today saying that we'll hold deposits and apply to rescheduled weddings and we can hold the balance as a credit or apply to a donation.

So we are keeping what we love in cut flowers and what got us started, which are wildflowers, herbs, perennials, native plants and trees. And then we're culling varieties that don't do another service, that aren't medicinal or edible, that won't work for drying or seeds. We are shifting a bunch of our annual flower production to food as we look at the insecurity of the food system in our specific neighborhood. So we're trying to make connections with our food access points, those that are uber local. And collaborating with another flower farm to sell flowers. Still figuring out what this looks like. We are cutting back on blush and white (flowers). I see this as an opportunity to push back on the white washing and heteronormativity of the wedding industry and hopefully push for a floral industry that centers that land, farmers, and florists after. Instead of top down directives.

We sell a lot through our coop and they are working a lot on grocery sales and just moved to an online sales model so I'm hopeful that will reach the public soon.

I have shifted my hiring plans, I was planning on hiring three people now just one. We are expecting to take a financial hit, especially since flowers are higher value. And we're trying to localize our supply chains as much as possible, order soil mix and buckle down.

I am excited about collaborations between farmers. Things that I need from my community and service agencies: setting up online market places and marketing, increasing community distribution and storage capacity, a simplified regulatory environment, assistance in creating partnerships between farms and schools and other institutions. Disaster relief grants, rent and mortage moratorium and universal healthcare.

Ari: Thanks Celeste you nailed it! A question for you from the chat: is there still a demand from your local grocery store if you've sold to them in the past?

Celeste: I have sold to local grocery in the past. I know there's still local demand in that flower farmers across the country are still selling and selling out on local delivery bouquets. I sold grocery through the co-op so I will check in with them and try to let this group know what's happening on the larger scale.

Ari: Great thank you so much Celeste. Now we're going to talk to Beth.

Beth: I'm Beth Robinette, I operate the Lazy R Ranch with my dad just west of Spokane. In terms of how we're looking at adapting our operations, we're an established multi-generation family farm so I recognize that we have a ton of privilege in that we are a lot more stable. So my heart really goes out to those of you who are in that first generation position and please let me know how I can support. Our family ranch was really founded in the midst of the Depression and we've basically operated with the Depression era mentality for the last 80 some years. So in a lot of ways we've been preparing this moment for a long time. I think meat is something that people are stocking up on. Most of our business is centered around custom beef, so halves, wholes, and quarters. I've been trying to position myself in a non-predatory way, but really encouraging our customers to make sure they're stocked up on product. I'm looking at possible more retail stuff in the meantime because we don't really have product to harvest until July. Looking at possibly selling more beef by the cut as people are looking to fill the freezer and be able to hunker down for awhile.

In terms of supply chain disruption, we run a really minimal input operation. I buy hay from my next door neighbor and we don't feed any other supplemental feed beyond a mineral supplement. So we buy that by the pallet and I'm well stocked on that.

I'm really most concerned about my butcher that I work with is a two person operation. So if anything happens there that's kind of the linchpin for my entire sales for the year. So definitely hoping that they stay healthy and well and if that doesn't work I'm not quite sure what I'll do. Still working on that part of the contingency.

And as far as what we need from representatives or agency folks, I think I personally am doing good, but on behalf of, there's just so much uncertainty for those that engage in direct marketing right now, especially those that sell to instituions and restaraunts. So we really need to make sure that those businesses land on their feet when it's all over.

Ari: Absolutely. Thank you so much Beth. Are your sales direct to consumer?

Beth: Yeah. Primarily they are. I have one institutional customer that I work with that thankfully they took delivery of beef last week and so that's paid for. I'm very grateful that happened then and not now. Primarily we are focused direct to consumer which I think is going to be really valuable.

One of the resources I wanted to throw out to people is that Graze Cart, which I haven't used before but they're an online marketplace/website company for folks that sell and ship meat, and they're offering a free pass for their 60 day course on how to ship meat direct to consumer so I can send information out on that.

Ari: That would be great, and I'm going to sneak in one more question. There are actually a couple of folks who are asking about the Depression era mentality that your family farm has, and are there any sort of useful lessons from that mentality that you're drawing upon?

Beth: I think that the biggest thing is that we've just been so averse to having any kind of debt on our ranch. Which I recognize is way easier when you rented and then bought land in the 30s and 50s instead of now. But we just reuse, recycle everything. There's not a vehicle on the place that's newer than 25 years old, tractors the same age as I am. We just really try to be extremely conservative in our financial planning. And we just don't ever throw anything away! I'm looking at a pile of junk that usually drives me nuts, all of the used things my family has cast off for the last however many years that's just in a heap at the back of the property. But you never know when you're going to fix the old .... and need to take it for a spin.

Ari: Awesome, thank you Beth and thank you everybody for your questions.

Emma: So I want to now turn it over to our service providers panel, which we're really grateful to have some of their institutional knowledge here. And this is a time for updates for these non-farm organizations and agencies to give a state of their food systems perspective and the impacts on their organizations. We are going to jump right in and start with Jennifer from the Neighborhood Farmers Markets here in Seattle. She's the Executive Director, and I ask her this question both from the aggregation of all your responses as well as that I'm planning on being at a farmers market that the Neighborhood Farmers Markets run, so this is pertinent and personal as well. So Jennifer our question for you is, the closure of farmers markets is having a huge impact on farmers already and as we plan our seasons. There is a frustration that farmers markets aren't being treated as essential food outlets like grocery stores. Can you speak to that decision to close them and what work is being done to mitigate the financial impact on farmers?

Jennifer: Yea that is the question. And I will just start by thanking you for including me in this and the opportunity to share this time with everyone, and to say that I share your frustration. I can talk a little bit about the first part of that question and say that we as an organization have been working through the city and the King County Public Health Department all throughout the week last week and prior to that doing due diligence around our attendance numbers and safe operating plans, and the advocacy work to make sure markets were recognized as essential food outlets. And had been on a successful path up until Thursday night when the decision came out from the mayor's office, that in hindsight I think what likely happened was that farmers markets are situated in terms of policy language in the city of Seattle as temporary events. We are not this or that in a lot of policy language and I think  that this situation highlights some loopholes that we have to work to close in the medium term after we get through this initial phase together. In other states that's not the case, California for example who has statewide certification for what it means to be a farmers market and defines that in terms of policy, they are open right now and they are operating and working through how to do that safely in terms of the risk to staff and to the public. So we've been closely following that and it's really frustrating to be in this postion.

The second part of this question was the mitigating the financial impact to farmers. We right now have about 140 vendors in the markets and about 75 of those are farm based. So we have sent out a survey yesterday to help gauge the immediate impact on those people and those businesses and what their immediate needs are. So that's one thing we're doing just to get a sense of the landscape out there. We've been on the phone and talking with people directly a lot. And in the short term mostly just connecting farms with other sales opportunities - whether that's a drop point and taking pre-orders, wholesale purchasing, people supplementing CSAs, or other promotion of what people have been able to pivot and do. But that doesn't catch everyone.

So our priorioties right now are kind of two-fold. One is to work with government to safely re-open permitted, regulated markets. A big memo went into the city yesterday and we're hoping to turn that into a public sign on letter for the local food community to really help channel these voices and the impact it's having on the community at large. This includes the shopping community too - we're just hearing endless feedback coming in the front door. But I think that should hearten you as it does me, there is power in our voices together so look tomorrow for a public sign on letter.

The second thing we're doing is organizing immediately around emergency relief funding. So fundraising, we have a mechanism called the Good Farmer Fund which has a set of criteria that's really been around weather related disaster. We know we need to reshape that for this situation and figure out a way to fundraise and provide a stopgap for farms, especially the ones that are not connected in ways that others are or can't pivot their operations to implement something like door to door delivery overnight. So I'll leave it at that and you probably have other questions and I'm happy to share.

Emma: Yea, Jennifer that's super helpful to hear what you're doing and how farmers might be able to access some financial support and how we can also hopefully take action to change those regulations so that markets can open soon. So I'm sure we'll be able to share out some of those resources later.

I want to go over Laura who is going to share from the WSDA Regional Markets program. And Laura can you tell us about regulations that are currently shifting or regulations that you're anticipating shifting to make less formal distribution possible?

Laura Raymond: Hi everyone this is Laura, thank you for having me here. I lead the Regional Markets Program and WSDA which is our small farm direct marketing assistance program and our farm to school program.

So that's a really big question Emma, and everyone, and it's actually one we work on all the time. And I think one thing that we're seeing that Jennifer pointed out in relation to farmers market is kind of true across our food system with this really unprecedented times, some of those gaps or challenges that we've figured out ways to work around up until this point are becoming more visible. So perhaps there's some opportunity in that. I think what I want to share a little bit right now is not so much specific regulations because I don't know what those are yet. As you all know regulations are slow moving things and state, local, and federal agencies right now are in fast emergency response mode. So if there's one thing I could communicate that I'm hearing really clearly that I'd like to share with you is that my sense is that there are a lot of people out there who are ready to help, and they're trying to figure out how. There is action happening obviously at the local level, the city, the farmers markets are dealing with some of those responses at the state level and now at the federal level. There are emergency packages being passed.  But those still may take a little while to roll out.

So what I wanted to do, one of the really important things is being able to find good information while all of these changes are happening. And just like those of us who are trying to figure out where to buy food or where to sell our food tomorrow, this is a totally unprecedented experience for us. And similarly is a totally unprecedented experience for government agencies to be responding to such a widespread public health concern and then to have to respond to the economic impacts of the response to we all need to make sure our public health remains safe. So I would just say that we're all in it together and there is a lot of action happening. But in the meantime I want to let people know there is one really key place for information on the state's COVID response which includes everything from the proclamations as they're rolling out, to links to financial and small business support, to information for workers, that's a clearinghouse.

The next piece, about the small business stabilization fund, I don't know about that in particular, but I can say that all of WA state has been included in an emergency declaration so all counties in WA state right now are part of the Small Business Association's disaster and economic injury loans. So if you think your small business is going to be impacted or have economic impacted due to COVID which is everyone here, you are encouraged to go to the disaster loan site and apply. And it's a little bit of a slow process but if you think you might want one of those loans, they're intended to be operating loans to help with cash flow, and keeping staff on, etc., etc., you want to apply now. And then just fill out the application and they'll get in touch with you in a week or two to figure out next steps. Just one small tip that I'll share with that right now that we've heard is similarly they're having to shift that application to apply to this current situation, they're used to dealing with weather or other types of natural disasters, so some of the questions might not quite apply. They key thing is to get your organizational structure right when you apply. So make sure to know if you're a sole propiertorship or a non profit or whatever your structure is.

I also want to direct people to the Employment Services Department. That is where you can go for questions about paid sick leave, paid family medical leave, unemployment, or standby options. Either as a worker or as an employer. That is evolving, there is flexibility trying to be built in there. For example to allow a waiver of the usual one week waiting time to apply. So I don't want to overwhelm people with just a long list of resources but those are some critical ones for business owners to know about.

I want to share one more thing. One other thing that I want to share out, is I heard some conversation in my small group, is people wanting to be sure that they're taking care of their customers even as they're shifting and responding to doing business in this environment and best practices. And I think that's good for me to hear I think we'll try to respond with some more helpful information in that way. But in the meantime King County Public Health has produced a really great process flow for planning for a Corona virus pandemic for business owners, and it really walks you through creating a pandemic plan for your business with everything from thinking about employee training to increased sanitation practices to communication with your customers. I think it's a really really nice resource.

And then finally, I think probably the most important thing I want to say and ask of all of you is that my whole team is here. And our whole agency is behind us asking how we can help and what needs are. And we are being asked on a daily basis by both the governor's office and the emergency response team, legislators both in WA state and WA DC about what are the needs both immediate short term and long term for you all to successfully respond to this situation and remain viable as businesses. So I would say the more conversations you have amongst yourselves and organize as needs emerge, we really want to hear about them and those can be in an organized way like the letter that Jennifer was mentioning, I'd love to be cc'd on that kind of stuff and sharing it up. And then on the individual farm and business level, shoot us an email with a real need that you're seeing. If it's something we can respond to we're really going to try to. We've shifted all our attention to responding to this situation. But also if it's something that I can elevate, that is what we are here trying to do.

Emma: Thank you so much Laura. It's really great to hear that some big state agencies have our backs and we will absolutely work on getting together a needs list to share with you. And will encourage everyone here to reach out to you directly as well.

Vero Vergara: So we will move on to our next service provider and producer. And one note as well off of what Laura is saying, collectively sourcing needs and resources we are hoping to see in our communities, certainly we take your privacy very seriously and again thank you for responding to the registration form. Those of you who have state you are willing to share your responses with government agencies we will be forwarding some of the concerns you've already voiced and contributed to the conversation. So that's a way for folks to hear a little bit from everyone who has attended today.

Moving on, so we're going to talk again to Beth Robinette who is a co-founder of Local Inland Northwest Cooperative, otherwise known as LINC Foods, which is a food hub. So Beth our question for you, from the perspective of LINC and running a food hub, how has the shutdown affected LINC as a food hub, we've heard a little bit from farmer's markets, but can you offer some insight into what the wholesale supply chain looks like right now for farmers that you're working with?

Beth: Yea I mean, we primarily sell to restaruants and institutions as basically our business model. SO the majority of our customers are closed. There are a few restaraunts, we have one really great restaurant partner that has really pivoted to take out that has a great community following so their sales are actually pretty much the same as they've ever been. So that's one little bright spot. But we do also run a multifarm CSA veggie subscription program so we're jsut working to pivot as quickly as possible towards that. That's not slated to start until June so we are figuring out some intermediary ways that people can order online from us directly. It's definitely pretty challenging times and we are just trying to play out as many scenarios as possible and be prepared for whatever happens. I think overall our biggest hope is going to be just focusing on those direct to consumer sales as much as possible. And I have farmers emailing me and asking what's going to open and will farmers markets be open and I honestly don't know what to tell folks, so we're just going to do the best that we can. I guess the hopeful space there, is that this could go really really well. And people could really reconnect to purchasing local product in a more profound way than they've really been focused on it in a long time. So I'm really hopeful that that happens and that we're able to successfully pivot, but we're definitely preparing for all scenarios.

Vero: Awesome, thank you so much it's great to hear from you and that regional food hub perspective.

Next we'll go ahead and talk to Nicole Garden who is the Food Assistance Coordinator with the WSDA Food Assistance program. So the question we have for you today is - do you foresee any grants or funds that would allow farmers to sell to food banks or pantries? We know that some funding already exists, some foodbanks work with forward contracting. But are there ways we can advocate for emergency funding put towards purchasing from local farmers?

Nicole: So if any of you don't know about our Farm to Food Pantry initiative, it's in a six year kind of pilot phase because we have not had sustainable funding for it. So we've kind of cobbled the existing funding for it from our EFAP - Emergency Food Assistance Program - funding that's a state funded program. In the past it's been about $33,000 that go to 15 hunger relief organizations who establish early season contracts with farmers. And we're able to work with an organization called Harvest Against Hunger who then is able to prepay those organization so they can establish early season CSA and wholesale hybrid type contracts. $33,000 is not very much but luckily in this most recent legislative session we got a budget proviso for $100,000 to go towards the initiative. So that would be about $80,000  that would go directly to farmers from that initiative. Initially our goal was to get that funding for the 2021 growing season, but given the current climate and economic climate we're actually looking to see if we can actually bump that funding up to this growing season. We are not clear on when we able to use those funds. We know as of yesterday the governor did not sign that yet, so we're looking for that signature, it could have happened today. So when that becomes available and we know for sure we can shift those funds we are going to shift most of those funds to this growing season so we can then give you a little bit more of a buffer as far as economics go. So when we find out more we will be keeping in touch. 

Currently to give you just an idea of where we're located, we're located in 20 counties this year. That would be in Asotin, Columbia, Garfield, Walla Walla, Whitman, Clark, Skagit, Island, Ferry, Poneray, Stevens, Clallum, JEfferson, Chelan, Yakima, Okanagon, Kitsap, Mason, Spokane, and Gray's Harbor. So ways we could increase that funding even more so would be letters to the governor, letters to your representatives saying if you've actually had contracts with these hunger relief organizations in the past giving your perspective and feedback on how this is a critical time when we could use additional funding to provide that support because food pantries right now are in a state of emergency. As of right now they're seeing about double the amount of clients, at least on the West side of the mountains. We are anticipating some food from our federal programs and we're expected to see four times the volume. I have one story of 500 clients coming to the food pantry which was about double to triple the numbers normalls - so they are going to need additional food resources. Unfortunately funding for that right now, all their funds are going into getting protective equipment and doing different distribution models that are safe for the food banks and food pantries and the clients themselves. 

Another opportunity is in the 2018 Farm Bill there was a provision for the Farm to Food Bank program, not to be confused with Farm to Food Pantry. And in that bill there have been a lot of questions on what that would look, and we had not received guidance from the USDA until last week, it was not a good time for us at that moment because we were dealing with a lot of emergency services, so we're still trying to evaulate what that would look like. We did have a stakeholder call with farmers and hunger relief agencies to see how that would best support them. The caveat is it is not purchasing produce. It is for providing funding for the harvest, transport, processing, and packaging of donated product. Based on our conversations with farmers the best needs there right now are for storage opportunities, plastic boxes, and also just building capacity at the farm level in terms of refridgeration capacity and transportation capacity to be better able to serve food pantries. We are still trying to develop our state plan. Our state plan has to be in to USDA by the 31st of this month which doesn't give us much lead time as we are now dealing with emergency situations, but we are going to try our best that the farmers we spoke to, that their vision is captured and that we can support you in any way we can.

To give you an example of what that would look like, that's about $86,000 just for this current federal fiscal year and that fiscal year will end on September 30th. So we have very little time to figure out how we're going to use those funds and how we can best support you and the hunger relief agencies.

Vero: Thank you so much, that's super helpful to hear about Nichole. A couple things I want to draw out - it sounds like there is an action request for farms who have already been able to access some of the funding through forward contracting or different contracts with food banks to take a moment of leadership and come forward with those stories of success. Another point - it also sounds like some of the funding you're talking about around infrastructure and packaging, while it sounds like there is a caveat that it's not for the actual produce and that the produce would be donated - that sounds like a juicy opportunity for new or emerging farm co-ops that are thinking about rising up in this moment. Thank you for that perspective.

Nicole: No problem. One thing I do want to say about those farms that have experience contracting with farm to food pantry initiative with their local hunger relief agency is that one of my coworkers, Katie Rains has now been appointed by the governor's office to coordinate communication between the governor and hunger relief needs around the state. She would be a great person to push those requests up to the governor. So if you would like to email me those letters, if you do feel inclined to provide them, I will forward them to her and she can hopefully put them in the hands of the governor to assess how the farm to food pantry is mutual support to the hunger relief agencies and to our local farmers. 

Vero: Thank you so much. We're going to move into this point a facilitated questions and answers from the chat room we have. Our plan here is to draw out at least one question per non farmer panel member and then one to two questions for the farmers to tackle. 

I'm going to hand that over to Ari and Emma.

Ari: Thank you so much Vero. It looks like one question people have right off the bat for Nicole is, "how can farmers make it easier for emergency food programs to buy from them?"

Nicole: That is a great question and we think about these regional food hubs like LINC and we actually currently have BMAC which a few of this people on this call work with, and they're trying themselves to be a regional food hub and a food bank and see how that can support each other. So I think that those are great spots, one stop, that cuts your bottom line a bit, but having one place where they can reach out and orer things with ease would be great because right now they are in the thick of it. So anything that can make it easier as far as online ordering or you reaching out to them yourselves. We do have a resource list for the organization that are participating in the farm to food pantry this year on our website where you can click their name on the map and get their contact information. I'd say reaching out to those folks would be a great idea. Anything that makes it easy for them and streamlined - freshsheets are always great. 

Ari: Great thank you so much for that info.

Emma: I'm seeing some questions come up here around food and worker safety which maybe Laura Raymond you would be able to addresss? There's two parts around safety, one how can we make the food that we're selling more safe in terms of specific actions farmers can take. And then a second question around worker safety - is there any information or guidelines around farmers who are working on farms in close proximity to each other and how do we create a safe work environment on the farm?

Laura: Yes, I'm going to caveat this with the reality that I am not a food safety expert and that that's not my realm at work specifically. I will say that both the state department of health and the county health departments are rolling out infomration with that kind of guidance. I think in terms of on farm produce and food safety, depending on what your operation is like you may already be familiar with the Food Safety Modernization Act - the FSMA produce safety rule, you may already be familiar with Good Agricultural Practices and the audits, and those are all based on best practices and the information that I have received to date is that the recommendation from the FDA is to continue following those best practices. Similarly for processed products, good manufacturing practices and whatever your processsing plan is, is best practice. 

I think the question that has come up for a lot of people is more around the worker safety and person to person transmission. I have seen different recommendations ranging anywhere from trying to keep a minimum of six fee of distance between anyone at anytime. And of course the strong strong emphasis on not having anyone come to work sick. What I am hearing loud and clear is that some more specific guidance oriented to farm businesses and direct to consumer sales would be really helpful. So I'm taking that away from this call and we'll see what we can do to get that out.

Emma: Thank you that would be really great. It sounds like everyone on this call would appreciate those resources. I want to let Beth speak quickly to food safety as well:

Beth: Yea I just wanted to add that our facility is GAP certified and we've done a lot of work with our farmers around best practices around food safety so I have some resources I can share out. I know USDA also has a lot of resources around that but the main things are just really looking at good record keeping so if there is any issue it can be traced back to a specific person so you should be recording who is harvesting what and how much and where that product is going. Having good traceability means we can track down probelms faster. Washing hands very frequently which you should be doing anyway Ihope. But making an extra effort to wash hands We are definitely trying to encourage social distancing for our employees so the whole team is working remotely except for critical delivery staff. We're disinfecting the trucks in between drivers using them so we're minimizing cross contamination. And then making sure people stay home if they feel unwell. And we're requiring all of our employees to have 72 hours symptom free before they return to work. So those are just some of the things we're doing to address food safety.

Ari: Thank you those are great, tangible things to apply. We also have one more question for you Beth since you have some experience with food hubs, folks wanted to know if there are ways you would suggest to quickly moving to build online markets or possibly even food hubs?

Beth: There are a bunch of different software platforms out there that help with the sales platform part of this which is pretty essential. We are in the process right now of transitioning to a new software program. So we are using Local Food Marketplace, I know that's what Puget Sound Food Hub also uses. We've used Farmigo to manage our LINC box subscription so those are two really critical resources for just orchestrating all of the logistics. I'm happy to tlak to anybody individually too if they have more questions.

Ari: Thank you so much Beth. I think we have one last question directed at Jennifer. Jennifer we are wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the best way we could advocate for farmers markets to reopen and that could be on the individual level, farmers collectively...what do you think will work?

Jennifer: You know in terms of what I think will work, I don't know if I can answer that because we are in a really changing situation. And as much as we want to reopen as quickly as possible, we have to do that as safely as possible. So I'll address the advocacy in one minute, but I think that when we reopen, that visible public safety plan has to be in place for our shoppers and we have to be prepared as a whole community to implement that. So we are working on that from the inside out right now as the situation and public health guidance changes. We do need the proper permits and public health guidance in place and so those are pretty clear calls to action for the city to help us work through so that when we open we are ready and prepared. As far as how best to advocate, we're committed to this public sign on letter which is being drafted right now. It is really Seattle centric but I also know that since we play a large role for direct to consumer farms who sell all over the state it does have a ripple effect. So I think what people can watch for is that sign on letter and then we haven't yet identified if we'll channel a way for people to write their own statement about what impacts COVID is having on farmers and how do we fit in to both the emergency funding landscape and the importance of reopening farmers markets when everyones prepared. That's the strongest answer I have right now but we will continue on this path of helping to channel everyone's voice. I definitely think we're stronger together and we need to be focused in our messages to a pretty overwhelmed and taxes set of public agencies in this crisis right now. So we'll do our part to help. 

Ari: Thank you so much. I think everyone is anxiously awaiting more ways to actively participate in that. We are getting close to the end of our time so we will shift to close.

Vero: Thank you to all of our panelists and the enormous show up of attendance today. Your time and attention is what's going to get us through this moment so it's really lovely in focus and in conversation with you all. One thing I want to bookmark for the group is we’ve identified several large topics that we hope to follow up with additional resources about, those include: 

Farmer Mutual Aid fund/fundraiser

We're thinking about doing some deep dives into:

Food Safety Best Practices

Financial Resources & Emergency Funding available to producers

Farmer Advocacy in the Food System

Exploring New and Alternative Sales and Market Channels (thinking towards cash flow for developing delivery/CSA models, regulations/licensing, emergency policy/regulations change) 

Organizer Skillsharing for bringing rapid response sessions to your community

And more!

We hope you are able to leave this session with some new perspective on the present moment and what’s on the horizon for agriculture and food systems. 

We will be following up within a week with the recordings from this session and a resource list we’ve compiled from various sources. 

Take good care of yourselves!

Goodbye!