As many of our newsletter readers know, the Farmlink Response Team made its way around the country this summer visiting distribution sites, farmers, families, and disaster zones to volunteer and learn about how we can better serve the communities that need us. While in Lake Charles, Louisiana, our crew on the ground was looking to make contact with and support any grassroots organizations providing food and disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Laura. Our team parked the RV and began walking through the rubble—fallen buildings and cracked family photos covering the ground. They walked through an abandoned real estate office to see cups of coffee left sitting out on the desks, as if the people there had fled at a moment’s notice. In the suburban area outside of Lake Charles, they saw burnt and destroyed homes, some with families still living inside.

Surrounded by wreckage throughout the community and driven by the desire to help where they could, our team looked for people supporting their community members in this complete disaster zone. That’s where they found Cajun Navy Relief and Rescue. According to team members Jake and Owen from the Response Team, Cajun Navy had set up a food bank in one of the last remaining structures at a main intersection in town. They had a handful of volunteers making hot meals and passing them from the back kitchen to the dining room where they were packaged and then sent out the door to a few pop-up roadside tents set up as drive-throughs for those they served. What struck our team most about this group was that they were feeding both members of the community suffering from the disastrous effects of Hurricane Laura and responders to the crisis working to provide support to these families and individuals that were so deeply impacted by the hurricane. This emergency response organization has been working tirelessly to help those in need, all  at a time when their own families were likely struggling with the fallout of Hurricane Laura. To read more about the vital work of Cajun Navy in response to Hurricane Laura, click here.

_{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.