Are upstate farms equipped to become the Amazon of food?
Are upstate farms equipped to become the Amazon of food?
Pandemic forces many farmers into e-commerce, but not every farm is ready to turn their produce into a click-to-buy product
Robin Catalano
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For upstate New York farmers, being able to sell online was a game changer during the pandemic. But the fees involved in e-commerce and lack of high-speed internet access in rural locations posed problems.Amy Scott Photography
Dale-Ila Riggs knew a monumental change was in the works the moment the Troy Farmers Market — one of the region’s oldest and largest — closed down in March 2020. For the past several years, Riggs, the owner of The Berry Patch in Stephentown in Rensselaer County, had made the bulk of her annual sales there. In the earliest days of the pandemic, as many farms scrambled to come up with a solution to getting their products into customers’ hands, she recalls, “I just put out an email blast and some Facebook and Instagram posts, telling people to email us with their orders.”