In April, our team met McLean Beckwith, a 25-year-old fifth generation farmer continuing his family’s legacy in agriculture. His family’s operation, Beckwith Produce, donated 100 acres of beautiful cabbage that were not going to be harvested due to small imperfections that would make them difficult to sell.
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Our team had the opportunity to shake McLean’s hand and admire his family’s impressive cabbage fields, located in the Rio Grande Valley about a mile from the border with Mexico. As far as the eye could see lay rows of big, leafy cabbages. As a girl from Connecticut, I had never before seen agriculture at this scale.

Farmlink harvested, packed and transported this cabbage with the help of our third party partners. With McLean’s generosity, we are on track to recover 1 million+ pounds of cabbage.

‍We partnered with an El Paso hunger-fighting charity who distributed the red and green cabbages to Texas families, many of whom are BIPOC. Itzel Delgado and her team at El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank helped this fresh produce reach communities who have seen rates of food insecurity greater than 15%.

The story of these 100 acres of cabbage illustrates what Farmlink calls our “complete harvest” program. There is surplus produce at every juncture in the supply chain – including the produce that does not even make it out of the ground. By moving fresh, nutritious food from the soil all the way to outstretched hands, Farmlink covers a crucial niche within food recovery.

It’s exciting to work closely with other young people dedicated to improving our food system. In his truck on the way to his family’s fields, McLean told me there was nothing he’d rather do than work in agriculture. He went on to express his enthusiasm for Farmlink’s efforts to work alongside farmers. We are proud to be the connector between Beckwith Produce and folks fighting hunger in Texas. I, for one, can't wait to watch this fledgling partnership grow.

Take care and cabbage on,
Carson Halabi

_{These changes are great. But how’s it all going to be funded?}

‍During the comment process, Farmlink, as well as other food rescue organizations and coalitions, raised critical questions about how the strategy would be funded and, as a result, which measures are feasible. In particular, we hoped for more clarity beyond the draft’s statement that the USDA would use American Rescue Plan Act and Inflation Reduction Act funds and the EPA would use Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds. Of the 86 programs or initiatives reviewed in the final strategy, only 15 are completely new programs announced in the strategy. 

The other 71 are existing programs or initiatives that either already have a food loss and waste focus or that the national strategy has repackaged as food loss and waste solutions. While we had hopes of new, innovative programs being included in the strategy, the good news with these 71 programs is that most, if not all, are already funded, meaning that they are not reliant on an increasingly turbulent Congress for implementation. Of the 15 new programs, which included the EPA’s new consumer education campaign and several new cooperative agreements with land-grant universities, only 2 had specific funding mechanisms. It has become increasingly clear that food rescue organizations and other stakeholders in the food and agriculture space should not consider this strategy as a new rollout of FLW solutions, programs, and funding but rather as an evaluation of the current resources and solutions and how each can be most effectively utilized to achieve the strategy’s goals. In particular, the framing of many of USDA’s programs as FLW solutions offers opportunities to utilize existing funding, data, and infrastructure to solve one of the United States’s most pressing problems.

Whats next?

Now that we have the strategy, it’s time to truly take advantage of the opportunities it presents. In the immediate future at Farmlink, we’re excited to continue optimizing Section 32 as a critical on-farm food loss solution as we anticipate significant surplus recoveries in the fall. As we move forward, we continue to advocate for dignity with food distribution, emphasizing cultural appropriateness and quality in every pound of food we rescue. As outlined in our comments, food rescue organizations are critical stakeholders and thought partners for the agencies. Our inclusion in the strategy as such is an opportunity we are taking full advantage of to help guide federal action to support farmers, feed communities, and heal the planet.