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Progressive Farmer: After the Pandemic – Meat Shortages Building More Market Connections

March 18, 2020

COVID-19 has changed all the rules about how food gets from farm to table, and increasingly farmers will be selling more beef directly to consumers, says Dr. Basil Gooden, a visiting scholar at the VCU School of Social Work, specializing in sustainable food access. ”If you can sell directly to the people who will cook and consume your product, that is ideal. You develop a relationship with that end consumer,” says Gooden, a former Virginia Secretary of Agriculture, who owns 80 head of cattle on his family farm.