Guest opinion

One of the great benefits of living in a rural community is our ability to enjoy food grown locally. Families appreciate easy access to high quality nutrition. Many farms and ranches depend on these local sales.

Like so much of our daily life, this system was disrupted by COVID-19. When work is interrupted at industrial processing facilities, commodity producers flood local meat lockers with their product. With already limited reservation space being taken up by large growers, those who depend on direct-to-consumer sales were left out.

Longtime customers are now being asked to schedule orders...