Charlotte area farmers ‘essential’ during pandemic. ‘People still need their carbs.’
Just after daybreak Friday, Keith Westmoreland fed brewery grain to the beef cattle on his farm just north of downtown Huntersville.
On his Huntersville farm, Henry Cook performed general maintenance on the large balers that form bales of hay in his fields.
Despite the COVID-19 crisis, it was business as usual for the two longtime north Mecklenburg farmers and others in Union, Iredell and Rowan counties, according to interviews with farmers by The Charlotte Observer.
“Our farming operations are not going to change,” Cook said , referring to the wheat, soybeans and hay grown on his 300-acre farm, which his parents started in 1948. “The pandemic is not having any effect on our timing, on what we do when we do crops.
“There’s got to be food on the table,” Cook told the Observer at his farm. “But everybody has to eat. So we got to keep producing food. People still need their carbohydrates.”
COVID-19 crisis hurts many farmers
Still, COVID-19 has presented challenges for many of the nation’s farmers, including local ones like Westmoreland.
His 65 beef cattle got less brewer’s grain than normal Friday because the Charlotte brewery where he buys the grain has less on hand. He said the brewery’s amount of grain dropped because of Mecklenburg County’s COVID-19 order that closed many businesses to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
And while Cook said he’s been spared any effect so far, he said other farming sectors are hurting.
“The dairy industry is having a terrible time right now,” Cook said. “They’re dumping milk in Ohio, Pennsylvania. With schools out, children aren’t drinking as much milk. Milk is actually being poured in the sewer” in Midwestern states.
Agriculture deemed a ‘critical’ industry
U.S. Homeland Security deemed agriculture a critical industry during the pandemic, AgWeb reported.
The industry also includes nurseries, greenhouses, garden centers, farmer’s markets and landscapers, Nelson McCaskill, Mecklenburg County extension director for the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service, told the Observer.
In a news release Thursday, the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services asked the public “to maintain strict social distancing recommendations while shopping at the markets.”
In the release, N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said:
“Farmers markets are a great option for locating fresh food items and supporting our farmers, but we need market shoppers to observe the CDC and public health’s recommendations of 6 feet of spacing between each other, frequent and thorough handwashing and staying home if you do not feel well.”
The Kings Drive farmers market postponed its season opening by a week to add some coronavirus-related precautions. The market will now open this Friday, April 10, the Observer previously reported.
Norman Simpson, one of the market’s owners, said the extra week is for building fiberglass shields between customers and cashiers to protect against germ exchange. Also, the market is installing a sink for hand-washing.
Agriculture is so essential to the nation that federal legislation, approved March 27, provides about $23 billion in farm aid, Mike Walden, an economist with N.C. State University, told the Observer in an interview Saturday.
Strawberry season
North Carolina’s strawberry season started in early March, about the time of the state’s first diagnosed COVID-19 case.
North Carolina is the nation’s third-largest strawberry producer with 1,100 acres of strawberries and $21.3 million in related farm income in 2018, according to the latest available state figures.
Local strawberry growers “rely heavily on pick-your-own operations and are adapting to find new markets for their products,” Troxler said in a March 31 statement.
Strawberry growers already follow “good agricultural practices,” Troxler said, but are adding hand-washing stations and hand sanitizers for employees and customers.
Growers also are “requiring employees to wear disposable gloves while handling produce and ensuring sick employees stay home,” according to the statement.
Several pick-your-own farms have limited the number of rows to pick and groups to 10 or fewer people, Troxler said. Growers also are offering orders in advance with roadside pickup, and some farms are making home deliveries, according to the commissioner.
Strawberry picking season began in mid-March in Eastern North Carolina. In the Piedmont, the season runs mid-April through the first week of June and in Western North Carolina from late April through the first week of July.
To local farmer, trade hurts more
Cook, the longtime north Mecklenburg farmer, noted how his livelihood is not a one-, two- or three-month trade.
“You have to remember, you don’t produce a wheat crop overnight,” he said. “Wheat crop is planted in October, and you harvest in June or July. So it takes 6 months to get a crop planted to harvest.
“Soybeans, corn are the same way,” he said. “Cattle take years to produce to a certain size. So you have to keep production in place so that we got the food to eat.”
Stamey Cattle Co. in Statesville, meanwhile, produced a video of the “top-quality” Jersey heifers it flew on a 747 airplane to a farm in the Middle Eastern country of Qatar in February, according to a video of the trip provided to the Observer this week by David Stamey.
Qatar is among 35 countries on five continents to which the Iredell County farm ships its prized cattle, according to its website. The farm was established in 1951.
Ongoing trade disputes between the United States and other countries remain a bigger concern at the moment, local farmers told the Observer.
Will people change eating habits?
Yet uncertainty remains for many farmers because of the pandemic, according to Cook.
“The pandemic over several months, depending on people’s eating habits, whether they still eat meat, chicken, whether they go to a more vegetable-based diet, that’s going to have more of an effect,” he said.
And Cook predicted smaller growers who rely more on sales at farmers’ markets could be financially hurt if fewer people begin to shop at the markets in response to the virus.
This story was originally published April 5, 2020 at 6:00 AM.