Good outshines bad for the Farmers to Families Food Box Program

What is right - and wrong - with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmers to Families Food Box program?

Plenty of both, it seems, but a complete evaluation of the program by the Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition found the program’s benefits outweighed its shortcomings.

The 54-page report says the COVID-era Farmers to Families Food Box Program “has accomplished much and can serve as a model for future USDA fresh food purchasing and distribution efforts.” At the same time, the report said key improvements could help the program — and future programs modeled on it — to achieve their full potential.
 

A ten-page executive summary of the report also states its “successes” and “issues and critiques.”
From that document: 

Successes:

• Millions of boxes of fresh produce and other fresh products were distributed to people experiencing need, helping to alleviate food insecurity;
• The Program helped mitigate distributor job loss;
• Small- and mid-sized farms were initially involved;
• The Program helped reduce food waste to some extent; and
• The Program was responsive and made some improvements between Round One and Round Four.

Issues

• The Program disproportionately left out small- and mid-sized farms and focused exclusively on price as of Round Three;
• The Program neglected an opportunity to better support minority- and women-owned farms; 
• In early Rounds, the USDA reimbursed some distributors an unreasonable amount for individual food boxes, then swung too far in correcting this issue in later Rounds, making low price the sole criterion;
• The Program’s box packing requirements created packing and processing complications for distributors and nonprofit entities and stripped recipients of the dignity of choice;
• The Program failed to ensure equitable distribution of food assistance to food insecure populations across the country;
• While the Program’s redirection of surplus helped to stabilize some agricultural producers, certain aspects of the Program may have actually contributed to food waste, rather than reduced it.

Some recommendations from the report include:

• Reintroduce non-combination boxes, especially produce-only boxes, to the Program;
• Publish best practice guidance to assist distributors participating in the Program;
• Require contractors to submit a plan for addressing food waste in their proposal;
• Utilize Section 32 commodities purchasing authority for future fresh produce purchasing and distribution;.
• Create or foster the creation of online spaces connecting farmers with surplus to connect with distributors, food banks, gleaners, and other nonprofits;
• Expand liability protection for food donations to ensure surplus food makes it to those in need;
• Expand food donation tax benefits to incentivize donations and offset associated costs;
• Earmark a portion of future federal funding to purchases from small- and mid-sized and minority- and women-owned farms;
• Broadcast that subcontracting with small- and mid-sized and minority- and women-owned farms and distributing to minority-led nonprofits are primary goals of the program;
• Publish regional lists of small- and mid-sized, and minority- and women-owned farms qualified to be subcontractors in the program or enact a matching program across contractors and producers;
• Evaluate bid prices based on historic and reasonable cost for a particular farm, producer, or distribution operation in order to ensure that small and specialty farms are adequately compensated;
• Employ best practices in food distribution, supply chain management, and emergency response, and ensure more precise and more equitable targeting for distribution of boxes.

The Trump administration stood up the program capably and quickly, and some Republicans are quick to point that out now.

In an  opening statement to a March 11 hearing on food insecurity in America, Glen Thompson, House Agriculture Committee Republican leader from Pennsylvania, said this:

“And while the Department is not represented in today’s hearing, I must give them my accolades as well, particularly the former Administration. Like it or lump it, the bulk of the response originated in the last Congress, under President Trump. Quick-thinking folks implemented Pandemic-EBT and the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, two projects that remain remarkably beneficial to families in need.
“The latter continues to fall victim to inconceivable criticism; there is always room for more solutions to the needs of our Nation. The Farmers to Families Food Box Program has open eligibility, making certain anyone and everyone in need, regardless of status, income, or household size, has supplementary access to nutritious foods that run the gamut from fruits and vegetables to meat and dairy. This program has provided more than 143 million boxes to households across the United States. And with this program, farmers were able to redirect their products and American workers were able to sustain their employment or join new ventures, all to ensure fresh foods found their way into the homes of millions. Regardless of the cherry-picked hiccups this Committee heard about over the summer, the program has worked exactly as intended.”

One food bank official testifying to the subcommittee said there is room for improvement in the program.

Kyle Waide, president and CEO of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, offered this:

“The support provided by and through a variety of federal nutrition programs has been critical to helping food banks do our work, starting with two programs that are providing us with large volumes of food. The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is a means tested federal program that provides nutritious food to low income individuals through food banks and other charitable organizations nationwide, while supporting U.S. grown commodities. The program provides critical support, helping us ensure a nutritious balance of food is distributed to families in need by allowing us to combine TEF AP with our other sources of food. As the committee already knows, Congress authorized more than $1 billion in additional TEF AP spending through a number of stimulus bills over the past 12 months, dramatically increasing our access to food resources during the crisis. 
Another critical source of federally funded food has been the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CF AP), commonly known as the Farmers to Families Food Box Program. This program was launched by USDA in April of 2020, as an effort to leverage surplus produce, dairy and proteins to support farmers, food service distributors and families impacted by the pandemic. Distributors are awarded contracts to purchase the surplus food items, package them in easy to distribute boxes (~20 lbs each), and distribute them to people in need through a network of nonprofits, including food banks. Almost $5 billion has been spent on this program since its inception.
CFAP food boxes have provided a critical source of food inventory for the Atlanta Community Food Bank and many food banks around the country. Combined, TEFAP and CFAP have provided our food bank with 50% of our total inventory during the crisis, an influx of food we simply couldn’t replace from any other source. Sustaining our response will be nearly impossible without ongoing support from USDA at similar levels. This is even more important for food banks serving more rural areas of the country, where private sources of food are more scarce. For these food banks, which are often serving areas with even higher levels of food insecurity, federal food commodities are accounting for 60% to 80% of their total food inventory. 
That said, food banks and communities have not had equitable access to CF AP product. The food boxes have not been available in many parts of the country, a reflection of the capacity and capabilities of the food service distributors to whom contracts were awarded and the nonprofits with which they chose to work. This has been particularly true in smaller and more rural parts of the country. For example, the distribution of food boxes in Georgia has been highly concentrated in the metro Atlanta area, with a smaller percentage of this product reaching other parts of the state. To remedy this imbalance, we encourage USDA to rely more heavily on the well established distribution methods and capabilities evident in the TEF AP program, where food banks and other social service organizations have already developed the relationships and capacity to move large volumes of food safely and efficiently into the highest need areas of the country. In contrast, with each round of contracts awarded through the CF AP model, we are reinventing the supply chain for these products, a less efficient, equitable and sustainable operating model. To the extent that USDA renews the CF AP program, we recommend that USDA examine whether more state and regional contracting with growers and producers would better support our agricultural community most impacted by the pandemic.”

TK: Good and bad, yes, but this program is still needed by Americans and the institutions that preserve the hope of people living in the margins. Keep the program going, with tweaks, at least into 2022.