One of the many unfortunate side-effects during this pandemic has been the massive amount of food waste caused mainly to severe disruptions in our nation’s supply chains. It’s a sad reality that there are people going to bed hungry each night while stories of dairy farmers being forced to dump milk down drains and animals being needlessly euthanized because of a lack of staffing permeate our news feeds.
And while farmers would like to sell their excess produce to grocery outlets or donate it to food banks, they’re up against an inflexible supply chain that is specialized for the end customer. Longstanding contracts between farmers, restaurants, schools and grocery stores determine how the crops will be packaged and processed. So it’s just not easy to find new markets and set up new distribution channels.
Stepping up to the plate though is this month’s #BeBetter Hero, the FarmLink Project.
“No food bank should have to turn people away during this crisis.”
A not-for-profit grassroots movement started by a handful of college students, they connect farms with food banks to feed thousands in need while supporting essential jobs. According to their website, they “fundraise externally to acquire surplus produce from farms and suppliers and pay transportation costs in order to deliver fresh food to food banks in need.”
Sparked to action after reading how farmers were plowing under fresh vegetables because demand from restaurants, stadiums and other food distributors has plummeted amid the coronavirus lockdown. The project’s founders, Aidan Reilly, a junior at Brown University, James Kanoff, a sophomore at Stanford University, and Will Collier, a senior at Brown used their unexpected early school’s closures to dive headfirst into FarmLink.
It isn’t uncommon for local farmers to help out food banks in their communities whenever they have an overabundance of product. Usually, those donations are very small in size though and are packaged differently than the food that eventually goes to paying consumers.
Farmlink is helping fill that logistical and packaging gap by trying to better match the food grown in rural areas with the food banks in more urban areas that are experiencing unprecedented need as COVID-19 continues to upend our old way of living.
In April, the group completed its first delivery, which consisted of 50,000 pounds of onions from a farm in Oregon.
“It’s been really amazing,” Kanoff told Fox News. “There’s been an outpouring of support of people volunteering and people donating, of people saying, ‘I’ll pick up a truck, I’ll go pick up on the farm. I have extra produce.’ We can’t thank the farmers enough.”
So far they’ve not grown to a team of 20 students and recent graduates from University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, Stanford University, the Harvard School of Business, and Cornell University, along with a network of volunteers. And as of this writing, they’ve served over 800,000 meals to food banks serving families, health care workers, and senior citizens.
It just goes to show that even though we are in one of the greatest crises of our times, that doesn’t mean a sense of selfless service has to take a back seat. And to that, we thank you FarmLink for being this month’s #BeBetter Heros!
Do you know someone like the founders of FarmLink or an organization that is not letting the pandemic stop them from making the world a better place? We’d love to hear from you so write to us and describe why they should be featured in one of our next #BeBetter Hero posts!
if you haven’t already, please consider making a tax-exempt donation to help us provide partial scholarships to low-income students attending college.
Hope each and every one of you are staying safe amidst all this coronavirus tragedy. Please remember to look out for those in need and try your best to stay connected to others if you’re practicing self-quarantine or social-distancing.
- Adam
Content courtesy of FarmLink, Variety, Fox News, and This Now