Lori Walsh: South Dakotans have shifted almost everything about how we live our lives. If you're feeling the stress and strain of the past few weeks, at least part of that is probably a simple reflection of how much has changed in your daily routine. We've also changed how we feed ourselves and our families. That has local food producers feeling the financial crunch of coronavirus. Tom Bodensteiner is President of the South Dakota Specialty Producers Association, and he joins us now on the phone. Tom, welcome, thanks for being here.
Tom Bodensteiner: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Lori Walsh: Tell us first of all, when we say specialty producers, who all does that encompass? That's a wide range of people. Give us an idea of how it runs the gamut.
Tom Bodensteiner: The specialty producers are usually what you would classify as non-commodity marketers. But it goes the whole gambit, all the way from [inaudible 00:01:03] all the way to yak and meat. It covers the produce, producers, the meat, dairy industry, just about everybody that's not a commodity farmer.
Lori Walsh: Are these essential workers? Is there a designation, I mean they're essential to us here at South Dakota and to the economy. Are they considered essential workers from a federal level or how is that being broken down?
Tom Bodensteiner: Most of these on the specialty producers, they're individuals that are doing a family farm in some form. So they're not corporations or anything else is that they're just individual farmers, individual greenhouses, privately owned.
Lori Walsh: How many are there across the state? How do we measure how many people we're talking about that are impacted in this particular subset?
Tom Bodensteiner: In the specialty producers association alone, we have over a hundred members that are specialty producers in South Dakota, and we don't take them all. There's probably three times that many actual specialty producers. If you look at it, you will find is that every corner of South Dakota has someone who is raising a garden and having a small farmer's market. Presently, there's 43 statewide farmer's markets in the state of South Dakota. So it's a lot of people.
Lori Walsh: As we look out our windows and we see buds starting to appear on the trees, one of the things a lot of us start getting excited for is the farmer's market, the sort of weekly ritual around my neighborhood of course is to head down to the Falls Park Farmer's Market in Sioux Falls and now all that is sort of up in the air. Tell me a bit about how the coronavirus pandemic and the spread of COVID-19 in South Dakota has really already started impacting those specialty producers across the state?
Tom Bodensteiner: For the producers of South Dakota, the biggest impact that we've had, the immediate impact that we have is there are a tremendous amount of producers that have been in business and had been producing products, lettuces and meats and everything else for the restaurant industry. Well, as you know with the coronavirus, the restaurant industry is just pretty much shut down. The problem with these vendors is they have the product, they started growing this stuff in January already in December. So they had this product that's available and their market is gone. So if people are looking for fresh vegetables, if they're looking for salad greens, if they're looking for meat or say, cheese or butter or milk is that, there are producers out there that have it available right now.
Lori Walsh: Talk to me a little bit about some of the challenges of those producers because these are not necessarily things that are going to last a long time. If you are getting ready to deliver your salad green order for example, you don't have much time to deal with that. Are we seeing a waste of, not only food waste, which is hard for everybody to accept during this time, but also a loss of income from having to throw product out because it's wasted now.
Tom Bodensteiner: Correct. And that's why South Dakota specialty producers on their website, which is sdspecialtyproducers.org, have set up a map of where the specialty producers of the state that have produce exist and they will all are established. So they'll take phone orders, they'll box it up, they'll even deliver it to you. So there are things that you can do, you can find local produce, there's a lot of local produce available and these guys do not want to throw it away just like we don't want them to throw it away.
Lori Walsh: We had a guest on the program recently, Stephanie Peterson with the Fruit of the Coop, and she was talking about how people had sort of stepped up in the online space and given their, I've got a refrigerator in my garage and you can drop off your egg orders here and people can go enter the garage in a safe manner and pick up their orders. What kinds of stories are you hearing about really local consumers trying to, not only source the food that they need that they might be having a hard time getting at the grocery store right now, and to support those local producers as local specialty producers in the state. All the time while coming up with really kind of innovative old fashioned tied with new technology ways to accomplish that supply chain.
Tom Bodensteiner: Some of it is, is that all the producers know that they all need to step up and they need to go into a different type of marketing. Like ourselves is that my wife run Country Road Gardens. We have eggs and produce and you know stuff for sale and it's changed from going down to a farmer's market, it's changed for going on, not so much even going online, but your clients will contact you by email or phone and leave a message and you'll put together their order and then get it to them in their preferred method. Sometimes it's just that they drive up and they stop honk their horn and you can bring their box out to them. Sometimes it's that they'll come to the door, some people will come in. It's just, whatever they're comfortable with. I think all the marketeers on the producers, will do whatever needs to be done to get their product to the customers.
Lori Walsh: As we look at the federal stimulus or our stabilization package and some of the efforts that have been made to support small business owners, from payroll protection to emergency loans, are those applying to the specialty ag industry at all? Is there assistance for some of these people? Because it seems like no matter how innovative and willing you are to meet consumer needs, some people are just going to run up against a very difficult economic reality.
Tom Bodensteiner: I'm not sure on the answer to that question. I'm sure that we all fall in the same category as the individuals is that we should be getting our $1,200 payment. But as far as the PPP loan system, most of these organizations that are going to the greenhouses, they're self employed people. So I don't know how that program will work for them. For the loans and other things is that, I'm sure a lot of them have tried to apply for them, but they're talking about a delivery of this, maybe two months out, maybe a month out, maybe we don't how long out. Where it's the fact that these guys actually have produce that's ready to go now. It's not, it's not like you can take our products and you can say is that, "Oh excuse me, we have grown a virus so the chickens just need to stop laying eggs for the next two months and then we'll start them up later." They produce on a daily basis and the crops come in on a daily basis and if they're not sold, they're wasted.
Lori Walsh: So this has really opened, I know my eyes, and people in our neighborhood about where we get our groceries and how we get our groceries, where our food comes. A lot of people in my on my block are trying to support those restaurants, but a lot of people are trying to figure out how to cook more at home as well. Are you, there's not a whole lot to be positive about this and in this circumstances as tough as it is, but I'm also wondering about some of the invitation here for people who haven't thought about how food gets to their table until now to sort of say go to that specialty producers website and find out who is growing things that is local and that is fresh and that you can have a real relationship with the person who grew your food. Are you hopeful at all that at least some of what will come out of this will be that that innovation in those relationships and that awareness for people about their food supply?
Tom Bodensteiner: I think that's a good point and I think it is something that all the local producers are looking at is that we have quite a clientele that that comes to the farmer's markets and other things like that. But it's always amazing that when somebody comes and has no idea where their food actually comes from and discovered this that their food is grown a mile away from where there are right now. I think that it will enhance the idea because right now is that the big grocery stores, your Walmarts, your Safeways, your big grocery stores that depend on transportation of all their food from outside the state come in, they have bare shells. And we have a specialty producers and we have a local food producers that have an over abundance of food and our problem is that we don't have people to buy it. So we don't have empty shelves. We just have to have a connection between our full shelves of food and people that are looking for it.
Lori Walsh: . All right, so the website is sdspecialtyproducers.org and that's where you can learn more about what's being grown and produced in your state, in all four corners of the state, and to find and find people who are willing to figure out to get it to your front door in one way or the other. Tom, any final thoughts before we let you go?
Tom Bodensteiner: Yes. The on the website there is a small, just to the left, there is a small map that we just put on that you can click on it and it has the producers that have produce right now and we'll deliver it to you so.
Lori Walsh: Tom Bodensteiner, president of the South Dakota Specialty Producers Association, we'll put a link up to that website on our website after the program as well. Listen.sdpb.org. Thanks Tom.
Tom Bodensteiner: Thank you.