Chloe Johnson and her partner, Craig Scariot, did not grow up on farms.
Running SkyPilot Farm hasn’t been easy or made them abundant. The set are having unforeseen success during the current crisis, which has them very carefully optimistic about the future of regional, sustainable agriculture.
Nearly 5,000 meatpacking staff members have actually contracted COVID-19 at 115 meat and poultry processing centers, according to the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention With animals lining up for slaughter and nowhere to take them, the price of beef and pork has dropped and livestock producers have resorted to euthanizing surplus stock.
In total, the pandemic might bleed the beef market of an approximated $136 billion, according to a study by Oklahoma State University, the potential fallout from which triggered President Donald Trump to issue an executive order on April 28 calling for plants to remain open.
” Without immediate help,” the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association pled in a letter to Secretary of Farming Sonny Perdue, “our industry might suffer adequate loss to push some livestock producers past the point of rescue.”
Next to a pen filled with baaing sheep and rowdy 3-week-old lambs, Johnson and Scariot, using mud-caked boots and sweat-stained trucker hats, described an altogether different reality.
While the industrial market is dealing with ruin, small-scale producers are seeing a prime time. In the U.S., more than 167,000 farms sell $8.7 billion worth of meat and produce straight to consumers, restaurants and sellers each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture
” Inventory management is the hardest part,” Johnson said. “We were growing slowly and gradually for many years. Now we’re unable to stay up to date with demand.”
Tucked between Stone and Longmont, SkyPilot sits within reach of a wealthy consumer base that lately has been excited for a reason to leave the home.
The farm sprawls across 43 acres of alfalfa, with 500 chickens, 550 sheep (100 more lambs are anticipated this season) and dozens of pigs. Their home, a relic of the