Pandemic shined light on local foods

EAST PEORIA, Ill. — Through the two-year misery of the pandemic, a silver lining began to shine brightly in the local food space.

“All of a sudden, people became so much more interested in where their food came from,” Jerry Costello II, Illinois Department of Agriculture director, said to kick off the Live Local: Food and Farmers Market Conference on March 23.

“In this instant gratification society that we all live in, when we go to the grocery store we’re used to getting whatever you want off the shelf. All of a sudden that didn’t happen in the United States. People were shocked.

“The upside of that is all of a sudden a lot of these local relationships were developed from local meat processors to farmers markets. Those relationships possibly wouldn’t have happened or wouldn’t have been there to cultivate had we not gone through this period of stress and strain.

“The thought of making sure you knew where your fruits and vegetables were coming from, maybe some lifestyle changes that occurred and some relationships that developed between restaurants and chefs and local farmers. Those things are positives in my opinion that came out of COVID. Let’s make sure that we’re capitalizing on those.”

Costello was also at the conference representing Lt. Gov. Julienne Stratton who leads the governor’s Rural Affairs Council.

He referred to Stratton’s motto, “Ag connects us all.”

“It’s something that’s extremely important to think about from so many different aspects — from the consumer and producer aspect. If we’re all not working together, agriculture from its very smallest points to its largest points doesn’t work properly and effectively,” he said.

Family Experience

Costello’s family has a small fifth-generation farm in Franklin County, producing crops and raising cattle, and he reflected on his family’s history of producing food for the local community.

His great-grandfather operated a dairy farm and his grandfather as a 5- or 6-year-old would deliver fresh milk to neighbors around Sesser before school in a goat cart.

After Costello’s great-grandfather died, his grandfather transformed the farm to cattle and hog production. His grandfather also purchased a 25-acre apple orchard from a neighbor to further diversify the farming operation.

“One of the things I did with him as a kid is we went to small towns in a pickup truck with plywood on both sides of the bed, stacked with bushels of apples. I would put the apples in small sacks and we would sit on the tailgate and sell apples to people in these towns,” Costello said.

“He developed unbelievable relationships, and from that it turned into a scenario where people would start coming to the farm.”

His grandfather hosted school field trips of first-, second- and third-graders and talked to the students about nature, farming and the process of growing apples in the orchard.

“Those are things from a local perspective, from a community perspective, that bind us all together,” Costello noted.

Unites Us

The director said he’s often told his children “that life is a lot easier than most people make it, and so many people concentrate on what divides us instead of what unites us.”

“So, buying fresh, buying local, helping your community, what an easy topic to talk to people about and to realize all in all, regardless of your religion, regardless of your political party, regardless of your ethnicity, we should all be helping each other, and the very basis of that, in my opinion, is community buying fresh, buying local,” he said.

The conference was held in partnership with Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Farmers Market Association, bringing local farmers, organizations and businesses together to highlight the state’s local food systems from farms to consumers.