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The result was free deliveries to places like the Emily Murphy Centre in Stratford, the Huron County Food Bank Distribution Centre, and Ronald McDonald House in London and Windsor, Veldman said.

With restaurants closed or cooking only for takeout and delivery, demand for small and medium eggs has dried up in Ontario. Large and extra large eggs are more popular in grocery stores and, like a few other products, they’ve been snapped up quickly by consumers stocking up while most of the province remains shutdown due to COVID-19.

“There’s been a definite shift,” said Scott Graham, an egg farmer in St. Marys who recently stepped down from the Egg Farmers of Ontario board. “With people not eating out, it just makes sense.”

“We’re trying to find a balance, getting as much to the grocery stores as we can, but yet there’s still certain eggs that won’t go to the grocery store because of size,” Veldman added. “We’re going to redirect (those) to food banks. We’re going to put as many eggs as we can into the food banks in the next four to five weeks that this crisis is on.”

Money that many egg farmers would have spent attending large events such as the Stratford and District Agricultural Society’s Fall Fair, the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto or the International Plowing Match may also be redirected to social service agencies, Veldman said.

With schools also shut down, eggs that were being sent to school nutrition programs are also available, although Veldman said egg farmers are considering ways to keep distributing those eggs, and the funds associated with those programs, to students who need them most.

“We just see it as a social responsibility,” Graham said. “The business has been very good to many of us, it’s just a way of giving back.”

cmontanini@postmedia.com