This is Planet Money from NPR.

We are recording this on Wednesday, March 25th.

Getting food this week has been insane.

Grocery stores are seeing a lot more customers than usual, and even though everyone is telling

us not to panic by, when you see all the garlic and onions gone, all the leafy greens

and potatoes gone.

Yeah, when the only thing left is artichokes, you can't help but feel like you should

stack up on all the produce you can find, even if you have nowhere to put it.

People are starting to realize there's only so much produce that you can store in your

fridge.

Um, it's so produce may be different than things like, you know, toilet paper in terms

of like that kind of, um, shopping behavior.

Eliza Dexter Cohen is a produce buyer for Tortillo and company.

They distribute produce, peaches, lettuce, tomatoes from farms to over 100 supermarkets

on the East Coast.

In some supermarkets, people are buying four and five times more than they normally

would, even if they're not going in looking for food.

As more people go to the grocery store to buy toilet paper, they also pick up bananas

and lettuce.

So even if people aren't hoarding produce, there's just more people in the stores.

And that's why you see empty shelves is is really partly just the foot traffic.

Those empty shelves are signs of the system trying to catch up with all the new demand.

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