I'm Virginia Prescott with the "What You Need To Know Coronavirus," web series from GPB.
The nation's food supply has been thrown into chaos by the pandemic.
Schools, hotels and restaurants that purchase meat and produce by the ton are closed.
Dairy farmers are pouring out milk, the value of hogs is dropping, and
unhatched eggs are being crushed. One Georgia farmer is trying to turn the
crisis into an opportunity for service. Jon Jackson is executive director of
StagVets and founder of Comfort Farms in Milledgeville. He relies on
veterans to help raise heritage breeds of animals and produce. Specialty items
that were in big demand from some of Georgia's top restaurants, now they're
available to hungry families on a virtual farmers market. We reached him on
his farm in Milledgeville. Jon thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having me Virginia.
So what do you raise and grow at Comfort Farms?
I got some okra from
Liberia and I used to serve with a veteran from Liberian Army. We became
friends and my mom's from Liberia and asked him to send me some seeds from
some farmers up there. So these are all heirloom seeds from Africa, okra is
indigenous to Africa and so it's really important for me to to bring over food
that you know many of the slaves brought over with them and it's so ironic that
we kind of grow a comfort food on Comfort Farms. So, do you want to go
see some animals?
Sure
Alright, we'll do that.
Sooo - weee
How's it going guys? Say hello to the world. They're coming off from back in
the mountains. So what we're doing is we got this pin that had a lot of pine
needle and damage to the pines. And so these guys are clearing that out and we're
moving them over to another pen three to four, five acre pen and we'll have two or
three of those on the property. We're going to come back in here, clear all
this debris out, clear the canopy out- open it up and then we'll go in and
plant a lot of different legumes and things like that, that will kind of
revitalize and nourish the land. So it's-
You're too heavy to jump up there but these are breeds of hogs that we actually raised.
I have what they call the K-O K-o and also the Royal Yabali. We're saving the mule
foot genetics, which is a rare ancient breed that came over with the Spaniards
from from Rome.
Ah ha, my goodness.
Yeah, yeah so that's one of the breeding moms right there.
She'll go ahead and get bred pretty soon, and then with the K-O's they will as well.
But really good docile animals and we're raising them on the land like we need to.
And we- with the co-op of other farmers we're able to support our market.
We probably have about a thousand hogs in our program all at once.
Now so that's
one of the things that the demand has cut down for right? And you're
sending- you're raising these hogs for individual restaurants for the most part
it's not like they're going to you know Smithfield and meat processing plants right?
Absolutely, absolutely these are not a commodity hogs, these are going to
restaurants and to families.
Many of your customers are restaurants. Who do you serve? How many?
We serve over 50 restaurants in a state. From Savannah to Athens to Atlanta.
You know from the Wild to the Gray, Savannah to Heirloom Cafe to Deer In
The Dove to the Wrecking Bar and also to Cobb Galleria. You know which is a wide
range of different types of businesses that we actually work with.
So what did
you think when you learned that so many of the restaurants that you serve as
customers were going to be closed?
Oh wow, yeah so I mean every farm you know- it's
easy to go into anxiety mode. You know when you realize that you know, that your
income for the farm to sustain is gone but you know like I said before you know
I'm a ranger, I'm a vet and- and I believe that the number one reason why
us humans here on the earth is to problem-solve and that's what we do and
that's what I did. And so I was given, I was given a situation and I had 16
seconds to figure out what my next move was going to be and in less than 24
hours I turned our farm into a virtual farmers market for addressing the needs
of our community that wanted to kind of maintain social distancing and still
have a way to get really good nutritionally dense food to their
families. And so we did that in less than 24 hours and we have since- I think three
and a half weeks ago, we fed over 400 families.
Wow. And how about the
restaurants? Any demand at all, I know some of them are doing to go orders?
Yea, so some of our restaurants- we have two things, two different restaurant clienteles.
Some restaurants are buying from us
because they need to feed their employees. Their employees are- they have
a lot of employees that don't have access to you know- they're unemployed.
They don't have any ways of- you know having any money. So we work
with them through the sales of our community, we're able to kind of
subsidize some of the bulk items that they need to feed you know over a
hundred people. So we work on different things to give to them but then we have
other restaurants who are built in- who have some built in resiliency towards
this, like restaurants- we have butcher shops, they're actually buying whole
animals from us, you know like more whole animals then before Corona. I mean
before the COVID-virus came in. Yeah Evergreen Butcher in Baker, they're-
they're buying two hogs from us every two weeks. They're breaking those hogs
down, their selling to the community and they're getting farm-fresh products
straight, locally from Georgia farmers and they're doing really well.
So how does that work? Are you actually able to recoup the revenue that you would have
gotten from restaurants, had they not been closed?
Oh yes we have recouped all
of our losses within two weeks from the restaurants because of the influx of new
people that have came in. When we stood up our virtual farmers market, we had
about- I would say a hundred- about eighty to a hundred people that instantly went
in, well those eighty to a hundred people told all their friends about it
now they're coming in and we just continuously see this huge rise of folks
who are actually going through virtual farmers market and we're filling their
orders and we're just making it happen. So although I'm not asking my
restaurants for payment right now you know, because I understand they're going
through such a hard time just trying to make ends meet. They don't know- just
the uncertainty of whether they're even going to be around after this is all
over with, it's still up in the air and many of them won't make it back. So I
can't rely on that, my whole thing is is to have us be sustainable because our
mission cannot fail. Us helping veterans can not fail and so by us turning and
pivoting towards the community and filling in the niche where the big major
chains can't our community has blessed us with that and by doing so I'm able to
have peace of mind, and some things I'm never going to get back from our
restaurants and that's okay, you know it's going to be you know forgiveness on
our part to to to allow them to go- we'll do good. You know God's been good to us
so we're gonna just pay it forward.
Well, Jon what a pleasure speaking with you today,
thank you so much.
Thank you ma'am, I appreciate it.
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from the "What You Need To Know Coronavirus," web series at GPB.org/Virus.