Grand Rapids Reporter

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's a stay-at-home order to protect the citizens of Michigan has had adverse effects on businesses that rely on consumers being out and about. 

One such business is local, family-owned greenhouse Standing Stones Farms, who has seen their sales cut by at least a third over the last week and a half. 

Standing Stones Farms delivers more than 90 percent of its product to big box stores in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, but owner Todd Elders says that the window to make a profit in this line of work closes quickly. 

"People in this area start buying plants in the third week of March," Elders said. "It dies down very quickly by June. By then the temperatures are warmer, and people aren't spending as much time planting. There's other things going on."

Elders said that the greenhouse only has about a 15-week window to ship its product, but that business has slowed down "big time." In an April 11 article by WWMT, another Kalamazoo-based grower reported that more than 80 percent of his business occurs in the month of May. 

While small greenhouses can sell on a local basis and continue to keep their plants alive in hopes of soon being able to resume sales to big boxes retailers and garden centers, Elders fears that a good majority of the profit numbers can't be made up. 

He explained that greenhouses usually have a good projection of how much business they might do in a given week. For that reason, Standing Stones Farms prepared enough product to meet the projection for the end of April but, with garden centers shuttered and "non-essential" plant sections of retailers roped off, that product sits unsold. 

"This is pure lost sales, that's what it boils down to," he said.

The halt in production takes profit away from a family-owned business. Elders said the majority of Standing Stones' employees are family members, who often contribute more than 12 hours of daily work to the greenhouse. 

Elders said shopping for plants doesn't put people in any more danger than does shopping for food, particularly when they're being sold in the same space. 

"There's already all of these policies being implemented," he said. "I just don't understand how shopping for plants could endanger people any further. Especially in a garden center, where you're outdoors and people aren't standing shoulder to shoulder there. I just don't get it. And we will never make [these sales] up."

Whitmer stood her ground at a news conference last week against outcries from business owners about the stay-at-home order, which she has extended until at least April 30.