At the onset of the novel coronavirus outbreak, a rush of panic buying left grocery store aisles empty. The shortages, however, likely spurred a rethinking of how vulnerable the food distribution system can be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis system has been broken,\u201d said Rachel Landis with the Good Food Collective. \u201cAnd here\u2019s a moment where we can see what is broken, and put things in place to make it work like it should.\u201d<\/p>\n
Home gardening is just one way people can supplement a portion of fresh produce needs. Larger issues, such as having access to regionally grown food, loom as tougher obstacles to tackle.<\/p>\n But efforts are afoot to establish a process to get more people fresher, healthier and locally grown food.<\/p>\n Statewide, Colorado State University\u2019s Extension recently launched its Grow & Give program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which encourages home gardeners to donate produce to food banks and other organizations.<\/p>\n In La Plata County, 30 gardeners have already signed up, said Darrin Parmenter, director of the La Plata County Extension Office.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just floored with the amount of people signed up in just three weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this is a push nationwide, that growing your own food, when we don\u2019t know what the system is going to do, is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n At Needham Elementary School, a garden started about 15 years ago to educate students, has been repurposed with schools closed. Now, teachers are tasked with the upkeep of the garden, which will eventually donate some of the produce to Grow & Give.<\/p>\n \u201cA portion of what the teachers grow will go back into the food-insecure system,\u201d Parmenter said.<\/p>\n Eric Ryba, who lives in the Animas Valley, said the outbreak reinforced the reasons why he turned to gardening all those years ago \u2013 a distrust of big growing corporations, such as Monsanto, and a preference for locally grown produce.<\/p>\n Ryba has been gardening for 30 years, but he planned to increase production with more time at home this year. Now, he expects he\u2019ll have excess crops, such as onions, tomatoes, peppers, spinach and beets.<\/p>\n \u201cI produce more than I can use, but it\u2019s not a problem because I\u2019ll give it all away,\u201d said Ryba, who is taking part in the Grow & Give program.<\/p>\n While more people gardening is a good thing, that\u2019s not to say it\u2019s a silver bullet for food-distribution issues or even without its own obstacles. Landis, for instance, said even having access to space to garden can be difficult.<\/p>\n The Good Food Collective is part of an effort in La Plata and Montezuma counties to give food-insecure populations, such as black and indigenous people, seniors and rural residents, more opportunities to grow their food.<\/p>\n \u201cOftentimes, that\u2019s a position of privilege to have enough space, time in the day and money for the supplies to do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Food for All program, for instance, provides garden boxes to vulnerable populations. The boxes can be placed on a porch or outside a home.<\/p>\n Another consequence of the novel coronavirus pandemic is strong support for local growers.<\/p>\n Landis said within the region, every CSA \u2013 community supported agriculture, where consumers buy a share of a farm\u2019s harvest in advance and receive food once production ramps up \u2013 has sold out.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are just going crazy for local food, whether it\u2019s home-grown or purchased,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But CSAs aren\u2019t an option for all farmers, and traditional ways of selling produce, like at the farmers markets, are struggling because of complications surrounding the coronavirus response.<\/p>\n But the wheels are in motion, Landis said, to improve food security so that when, eventually, the pandemic is over, the system doesn\u2019t go back to the old, unstable way of doing things.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the moment we\u2019ve been waiting for where a disturbance on what has been the normal forces us as a collective to shift and do things differently,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n