The latest campaign from The Farmlink Project, a nonprofit that connects farmers with surplus produce to food banks, highlights how the organization rescued 6 million pounds of potatoes.
Eliza Blank, CEO of The Farmlink Project, says growers are facing this surplus due to a bumper crop year in the U.S. and in Europe, which makes it difficult for U.S. growers to send the potatoes to processing overseas.
Aidan Reilly, co-founder of The Farmlink Project, says the other problem is that the domestic market for potatoes collapsed during this time of strong yields and U.S. potato growers feel powerless to discuss these challenges.
“Every mention that there’s surplus product in the market hurts the market even more and hurts these people and these families even more,” Reilly says. “This hush-hush nature — while there’s just millions of dollars being lost, farmers struggling and just mountains of not just potatoes, whatever the produce of the season might be just rotting.”
Breaking the Taboo of the Bumper Crop
Reilly says he learned about the surplus through a Facebook post and knew Farmlink needed to help. Blank says growers don’t want food to go to waste, yet in a complicated fresh produce supply chain, it might mean that growers don’t see many options for their surplus.
“What I’ve come to learn and appreciate about the work we do is that there are so many stakeholders in food and in food systems,” Blank says. “And it is very challenging to try and satisfy all of them, even though they may all have equal importance.”
She says this puts growers in an unfortunate situation where food donation might be a conduit for the surplus, but maybe they don’t know where to turn.
“They’re in a position where they can’t talk about it; it also means a lot of the food just isn’t getting donated,” she says. “These farmers want to donate food. You don’t grow food and then trash it without feeling something very deeply.”
From Social Media Sensation to Supply Chain Solution
To call attention to this surplus and to promote the work that Farmlink does — tracking down surplus produce and getting it to communities in need — the organization launched a Food Search and Rescue unit and a social media campaign.
The campaign features creative videos and language to draw people in with novelty, keeping consumers around for the message.
“We just decided to go all in on that concept where it’s like we’re going to make something fun and short and shareable,” he says. “But if you’re going to get one message across, it’s about what Farmlink exists for, which is we’re going to go out wherever this is in the middle of a field and find where this product is.”
He says that message seems to resonate with Farmlink’s social media audience.
“I have many anecdotes of people who clicked on us because of something fun or funny we did,” Reilly says. “And now they’ve become fully aware of the situation in the United States, and those are really valuable transformations for me. That’s a huge win in our eyes. That’s why we do stuff like this.”
While there is a fundraiser as a part of this campaign, Reilly says the real focus of this search and rescue campaign is to raise awareness of the need for solutions like Farmlink.
“We wanted something to point to. We wanted strong imagery. We wanted people to get impressions, attention that we can point to, drive more focus toward something like this, because it’s not the last time it’s going to happen,” he says. “It’s not the first time.”
More Than Point A to Point B
Reilly says it was important to share the story about how growers end up with surplus and how it ties into the bigger fresh produce supply chain. He also sees it as important to highlight the work Farmlink does.
“What we’re trying to [do], as always, is push the availability and the solution of food rescue as an option for when things like that happen to make sure this stuff doesn’t go to waste,” he says. “It’s not waste until it goes to waste.”
Reilly says that means the growing community needs to be more transparent and open.
“If we can remove some of the taboo around this, then we can make sure the food gets to people who need it,” he says.
Blank also says that this campaign is a nod to the work Farmlink does to make this food rescue possible.
“When you’re talking about commodity-level surplus, there are big questions that FarmLink is always trying to answer,” she says. “‘Where is it? Where does it need to go and how is it going to get there?’ And in order to do that, that takes a lot more than the point A to point B down the road that we’ve become exceptionally good at.”
Blank says that the ultimate goal of raising awareness of this food surplus is for growers to contact Farmlink.
“We want people to know to pick up the phone and call Farmlink when they’re sitting on surplus, because we can make sure that it gets to a community in need,” she says. “We have a very sophisticated and thoughtful infrastructure to do this effectively and efficiently. There’s not a lot of red tape.”
