N.S. farmer says producers have obligation to provide food amid COVID-19
'We have a duty to our fellow citizens and to our province to provide them with food at this time'
Getaway Farm in West Glenmont, N.S., has had to change the way it does business due to COVID-19.
Along with the everyday duties on the Kings County farm, which overlooks the Bay of Fundy, the business manages a processing facility in Bedford and a retail shop in Halifax.
"We have to take the extra precautions to make sure our farming family is pretty much quarantined so we don't become compromised, because then it compromises the animals and how we give them care," said Chris de Waal, one of the owners of Getaway Farm.
De Waal has two dozen employees.
As is the case with many businesses, the virus is making an impact on his profit margins. Business at the retail store in Halifax is suffering.
But they are seeing a big increase in their online orders and are having a hard time keeping pace. The same is true for many farm markets.
"Demand is definitely up and as we've all seen in Nova Scotia our food supply isn't quite as secure as it ought to be," said de Waal. "A lot of people are transitioning to online for good reason, and we are encouraging all of our clientele to do that."
Nova Scotians are being told to stay home. Trips to the grocery store are becoming rarer.
De Waal says online ordering is the wave of the future and he hopes more people will purchase their food online from local producers.
"I can tell you that every producer in this province is very concerned about producing food for us, Nova Scotians, and not exporting it anywhere," said de Waal. "We have a duty to our fellow citizens and to our province to provide them with food at this time."
No one knows when things will return to normal.
But de Waal says he hopes purchasers will learn from the pandemic and will be encouraged to support the buy-local initiative even more in the future.
"I really hope that this catastrophe, this crisis, this terrible time, causes us as Nova Scotians to take stock of where we are," said de Waal.
"We need to do something about this 20 per cent consumption of our own food. We have all this beautiful land in this amazing province and yet we depend on other people to feed ourselves."