Supporting a Local Agro-Food System in Covid-19 Times

This paper is about a farmer's market community's response for a local agro-food system as a response to COVID-19. We focus on small-scale farmers in the Piedmont region of North Carolina; identify some of their challenges, and the roles farmers markets played to provide local food access, especially when many other businesses were shuttered. We highlight several challenges faced in supporting a local agro-food system, for they are linked to small-scale farmer's production, harvest, marketing, and the publics' access to fresh farm products during the COVID months. A political economy framework was used to guide this research and examines the COVID-19 response-from March 2020-August 21, 2021. Through informal interviews and participant observation (when possible) we identify challenges and creative solutions enabling access to farmers markets and local fresh produce. The intricacies and interwovenness of syndemics within the context of this coronavirus and its emerging strains, acerbated by climate variability and the vulnerabilities by that experiencing food insecurity, and are challenging problems going forward for many communities, rural and urban alike.