A food nonprofit's response to COVID-19: The Common Market leans on its mission to serve

First paragraph: The Common Market is a nonprofit regional food distributor with a mission to connect communities with good food from sustainable family farms. Outputs of their work include improved food security, farm viability, and community and ecological health. The nonprofit services communities in its three active regions—the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, and Houston, Texas—by delivering healthy farm food to the institutions that serve them: schools, hospitals, eldercare facilities, early childhood education centers, etc. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck the nation, it shut down some of the nonprofit’s con­ventional wholesale outlets and exposed and intensified the issue of food insecurity throughout the country. The food hub prepared to lean on its mission intensely and creatively under these unprece­dented circumstances. Poised to test the limits of a regional food system, The Common Market unveiled the resilient spirits of its team, its partners, and the family farms that make up its network. This essay highlights partnerships that ignited meaningful impact for their farmer partners and helped meet the needs of vulnerable populations amidst the pandemic. . . .