One Farm’s Perspective on a New Presidency
Agriculture is a significant component of life in the Hudson Valley, and leading up to the recent Presidential Election, farmers in the area are hopeful to see what changes are implemented depending on the outcome.
MX Morningstar Farm in Hudson, New York, is a 40 acre certified organic vegetable farm. They grow a wide variety of crops for sale and wholesale and retail outlets, along with an onsite farm store, CSA, and they sell to wholesale and restaurant customers. The farm is owned and run by Max Morningstar and Maria Zordan and has been operating since 2014.
Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has impacted the MX Morningstar Farm in ways that Max and Maria could not have anticipated, saying, “many of our sales basically evaporated in March.” This period gave Morningstar time to reassess and consider how things would change following the pandemic.
Morningstar described that, although their sales remained largely the same, it was their customer base that they had to rethink, “in a normal year we’re right around 80 percent wholesale and so that wholesale category, whether it’s direct to restaurants or through distributors, is mostly going to restaurants.”
With the pandemic disrupting their wholesale opportunities, MX Morningstar Farm incorporated a CSA, also known as a Community Supported Agriculture, to boost their business.
When asked about the transition away from a mainly wholesale business, Morningstar described it as “sudden” while also saying, “we were faced with an increased demand on the retail side and we had to make a pivot to online sales, opening a CSA, and it really forced us to try to ramp up dales at our onsite store to try and compensate for the loss in wholesale income. It’s overall been a positive thing for the business, if not a little bit intimidating.”
And although COVID-19 did impact the farm, it wasn’t Morningstar’s number one concern leading into the election, “I don’t really have any specific policies in terms of direct help to farmers in regards to COVID.”
A week before the election, Max Morningstar of MX Morningstar farms in Hudson, NY expressed his thoughts about a potential news administration in the White House, and what that would mean for the agriculture industry.
Without disclosing his political affiliations, Morningstar commented on the upcoming election saying, “I would love to see our country’s government start to look at the food system a little bit more closely and start to either remove subsidies for large commodity crop growers or start extending that same subsidies system to the rest of us food growers as a way to decrease the price of real food for people.”
On Saturday, November 7th, Joe Biden was named President-Elect of the United States following the results of the 2020 election. This will undoubtedly have an impact on the agriculture industry of the Hudson Valley following Biden’s upcoming term.
