Seed sellers can't keep up as Americans grow their own food
By: Aimee Picchi
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As millions of Americans hunker down at home, the coronavirus outbreak has led to runs on everything from toilet paper to baker's yeast . Now people are reporting another shortage: seeds to start their "pandemic gardens."
Some seed companies said they've temporarily stopped taking new orders after seeing an overwhelming surge in demand. The increase in orders is "just unbelievable," said George Ball, chairman of Burpee Seeds, a 144-year-old seed company in Pennsylvania. The company closed to new orders last week because it needed time to catch up, although it plans to start accepting them again on Wednesday.
With Americans largely stuck in place, many are turning to home-based activities that are boosting sales of home improvement goods, alcohol — and gardening supplies.
"If I had to put my thumb on it, I would say people are worried about their food security right now," said Emily Rose Haga, the executive director of the Seed Savers Exchange, an Iowa-based nonprofit devoted to heirloom seeds. "A lot of folks even in our region are putting orders into their grocery stores and having to wait a week to get their groceries. Our society has never experienced a disruption like this in our lifetime."
Other Americans are struggling to put food on the table. Feeding America , the nation's largest network of food banks, reported a 98% increase in demand. And the need may be most critical in rural America, reported CBS This Morning correspondent Janet Shamlian. Pantries in some rural communities are closing because food is scarce while the volunteers who staff them are concerned about their own health.
Seed Savers Exchange started to notice an increase in orders in mid-March. Demand spiked during the following two weeks, she added. For now, the nonprofit has also halted new orders while it catches up on the backlog.
"We received twice the amount of orders we normally receive," she said, adding that the company of about 60 employees hired 16 workers to help cope with the flood of sales.
OK...this article originally had no image to go with it. Thus, I had to search for an image that would relate to the article to add and save it to my hard drive. However, When I Selected the image from the hard drive and set the seed to promote to the FP it would not do so without an image from the article.
So in order to get the seed to promote to the FP I had to use a bit of imagination....
I first created the seed without promoting it to the FP.
Then opened it for editing and and clicked the Select tab and added the image I found to go with the seed.
Then I checked the box to promote the seed to the FP.
Then the seed posted to the FP with the image I chose and all seemed to work OK.
It seems like a bit of go around having to do things that way, but, at least it worked to get the seed to promote to the FP. Not sure many of the Members would be able to figure all that out easily, as it took me a bit of doing to figure out how to get it to work.
The link to the article is here:
'
If you find a seed without an image, Fetch will tell you. At that point you could click Fetch Image and bring in an image of your choice from a website.
I will investigate your link.
Okay, in this case the author associated a tiny twitter gif as the image. This is a failure of the author. Fetch saw that the image (the gif) was technically valid and used it.
This is another case of garbage from the author and there is nothing Fetch can do about it.
The seeder will simply have to update the article when s/he sees a blank or poor image and either upload a new image or use Fetch Image to acquire a good one from the web.
This many create a real problem for users who will not understand why the Fetch is not working properly. They will likely think it is an issue with Fetch.
I can see where there could be a learning curve with the Fetch functions with some of the ways the authors have created their articles. And what works one time to resolve the problem, it may not work the say next time depending on how the various authors create their work.
As you say, Fetch can only do so much, but, much of it depends on the author and how they choose to create their work.
I guess we will have to take that kind of situ as it comes.
I know. This is the problem with a feature like Fetch. With most software we can have a well-defined result. Here, we cannot. It sucks.
I think that those of us who are getting the chance to work with the beta and find the areas that the member may have trouble with will need to lend a hand to help them in the beginning when they come up against such situations and don't know how to solve it. Many of the Members are not very computer and/or technical savvy, so we will need to help them where we can.
Being a TBT for many years that was part of our responsibility when the new softwear and/or operating systems were released to the public. So nothing new there. (grin)
One change I am making is to disallow the use of a .gif in an img tag for the designated image. Chances are good that if it is a gif then it will not be a good image and is not likely what the author would normally pick.
Ok. I suspected that like a video or slideshow Fetch would not work with the .gif.