b'There are sure to be bumps in the road going forward, but I think the whole story of farmers markets is yet to be written. They play a pivotal role as an access point to the local food system, states Brian Coppom, executive director of Boulder County Farmers Markets, a $9 million nonprofit operator of five farmers markets.** Community supported agriculture has followed a growth and plateauing trajectory roughly parallel to that of farmers markets, with some 600,000 Americans now belonging to 7,000 CSAs. The pandemic has caused an enormous, and possibly game-changing, surge. Reports from across the country are unanimous: CSAs are maxed out in terms of membership due to COVID-19, which has revealed the fragility of industrial food supply chains and the value of decentralized, local procurement directly from small farms. At one point, the rapid growth of venture-backed home delivery companies raised many questions about the future of CSAs. However that all shakes out, we are now seeing an across-the-board demand for direct access to food and farms, notes Guillermo Payet of Local Harvest.Then, take the recent case of Whoa Nellie Dairy, in Acme, Pennsylvania. Due to COVID-19 supply chain disrup-tions, the farms Pittsburgh-based milk processor stopped purchasing their milk, so Mary Beth and Ben Brown ramped up a 30-gallon-per-hour bottling and pasteurization operation on their farm and put out a call to their community. Before long, there was a line of cars stretching down the road, and they were expanding to 45 gallons per hour. 146'