I'm hearing a lot of new business is going to CSAs. If the market reopens this year, expect a shortage of product because farmers had to make decisions to maintain an income. #localfood https://twitter.com/dbsiowa/status/1249464444553494529

. @ZacharyOS posted on the tumult among some diversified farms. He didn't connect the dots to the farmers markets. A farmer has only so many acres with which to work and if customers move to CSAs there's less product for the farmers markets. https://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/2020/04/12/local-farmers-big-and-small-adjust-farming-pandemic/5126834002/

Smart small farm operators eschew farmers markets except as a marketing tool to gain direct sales, usually in the form of shares in a community supported agriculture project. The trouble for beginning farmers is to make a leap away from farmers markets, much though we like them.

Farmers markets will return after the pandemic, but I doubt it will be a good year for those operations, at least until a vaccine for the #coronavirus is widely available, which may impact the 2021 growing season.

My frame on this is Brent Preston's book The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution. Preston and his spouse didn't achieve sustainability until they left the farmers markets. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/review-brent-prestons-the-new-farm-is-both-tell-all-memoir-and-investigation-of-the-food-system/article35056146/