On August 25, The Farmlink Project helped deliver 17,480 pounds of apples from Apple King Farm to Food Circle.
Located in Yakima Valley, Washington, Apple King is a family-owned fruit business that has been growing, packing, and shipping apples since 1914. Apple King aims to provide consumers with quality apples while maintaining a safe and productive work environment for their employees. The organization also operates with innovative and environmentally sustainable practices. The Farmlink Project has worked with Apple King many times in the past and hopes to continue working with them in the future.
Based in Burien, Washington, Food Circle is a digital food rescue organization that uses volunteers to transport food from donors to food pantries and meal programs. Food Circle recognizes that the way the B2B food industry currently functions is often inefficient and lacks transparency when it comes to information about products and pricing. Food Circle started during the outbreak of COVID-19, which amplified the food industry’s flaws. Food Circle employee Amy Fauner noted, “part of the reason that we started doing this was that the pandemic made it very obvious that our food system is broken.” Food Circle successfully created an efficient, reliable, and innovative platform that connects suppliers and buyers with professionalism and transparency in the wholesale organic food industry. Committed to helping reduce the effects of climate change, Food Circle also supports programs that promote sustainable development. This includes the portion of their profits they donate to ShareTheMeal, a nonprofit run by the United Nations World Food Programme. Food Circle will send the apples that The Farmlink Project helped to deliver from Apple King to food banks and meal programs across the Seattle area.
These 17,480 pounds of apples will contribute toward both organizations fulfilling their overarching goal of serving families and individuals in need with high-quality produce. The Farmlink Project would like to thank Apple King for their meaningful and impressive work on the farm and Food Circle for working toward reforming the flaws in the food industry.
Objective 1 engages with wasted food before the retail level, mainly incorporating USDA and EPA actions to build out food storage infrastructure, increase food donation, and invest in research to prevent food loss at the packaging and transportation level. The most important inclusion in Objective 1 was an added paragraph spotlighting Section 32 as a critical part of the nation’s food safety net. Section 32, a longstanding part of the 1935 Agricultural Adjustment Act (one of the first Farm Bills), uses agricultural customs receipts to fund the large-scale purchase of surplus produce from farmers and its transportation to hunger-fighting charities, schools, and other recipients nationwide. This program keeps millions of pounds of produce out of landfills each year, compensates farmers for their work, and fights food insecurity. Its inclusion as a food loss solution is critical to minimizing on-farm food loss while supporting farmers and reducing hunger. Objective 1 also indicates that the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) data can be used to identify points of surplus, an important expansion of current methods. Still, we will continue advocating for Farmlink and other food rescue organizations with existing, diverse networks of farmers and other food suppliers to be incorporated at a national level to better identify and address points of surplus food.
Farmlink is particularly excited about a new prioritization within Objective 2: “All projects aimed at increasing food rescue and donation should assess the quality, nutrition and appropriateness of the food being rescued, not just the quantity (e.g., consistent with Indigenous food sovereignty).” Since Farmlink’s founding, one of our core values has been to prioritize and maintain dignity associated with charitable food distribution, and a new emphasis on quality, nutrition, and appropriateness, especially in terms of indigenous food sovereignty, is a critical step to ensuring that the strategy is fighting hunger in an equitable, open-minded, and just way.
Objective 2 also now has the EPA's commitment to use life cycle assessment techniques to evaluate food waste prevention strategies, the results of which will inform consumer campaigns and incentives. They have also committed to refining and expanding food donation and recovery infrastructure through the Excess Food Opportunities Map. Farmlink will continue to advocate for the inclusion of food rescue organizations with existing networks and relationships to help expand these tools.
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.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5ffe29e15f6569d732bec2b3/669fc8ce0f88c9bc7ced3ba7_New%20FLW%20Program%20(11).jpeg)
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.
< BackOn August 25, The Farmlink Project helped deliver 17,480 pounds of apples from Apple King Farm to Food Circle.
Located in Yakima Valley, Washington, Apple King is a family-owned fruit business that has been growing, packing, and shipping apples since 1914. Apple King aims to provide consumers with quality apples while maintaining a safe and productive work environment for their employees. The organization also operates with innovative and environmentally sustainable practices. The Farmlink Project has worked with Apple King many times in the past and hopes to continue working with them in the future.
Based in Burien, Washington, Food Circle is a digital food rescue organization that uses volunteers to transport food from donors to food pantries and meal programs. Food Circle recognizes that the way the B2B food industry currently functions is often inefficient and lacks transparency when it comes to information about products and pricing. Food Circle started during the outbreak of COVID-19, which amplified the food industry’s flaws. Food Circle employee Amy Fauner noted, “part of the reason that we started doing this was that the pandemic made it very obvious that our food system is broken.” Food Circle successfully created an efficient, reliable, and innovative platform that connects suppliers and buyers with professionalism and transparency in the wholesale organic food industry. Committed to helping reduce the effects of climate change, Food Circle also supports programs that promote sustainable development. This includes the portion of their profits they donate to ShareTheMeal, a nonprofit run by the United Nations World Food Programme. Food Circle will send the apples that The Farmlink Project helped to deliver from Apple King to food banks and meal programs across the Seattle area.
These 17,480 pounds of apples will contribute toward both organizations fulfilling their overarching goal of serving families and individuals in need with high-quality produce. The Farmlink Project would like to thank Apple King for their meaningful and impressive work on the farm and Food Circle for working toward reforming the flaws in the food industry.
Food Circle
Yakima Valley, WA, to Burien WA
On August 25, The Farmlink Project helped deliver 17,480 pounds of apples from Apple King Farm to Food Circle.
Located in Yakima Valley, Washington, Apple King is a family-owned fruit business that has been growing, packing, and shipping apples since 1914. Apple King aims to provide consumers with quality apples while maintaining a safe and productive work environment for their employees. The organization also operates with innovative and environmentally sustainable practices. The Farmlink Project has worked with Apple King many times in the past and hopes to continue working with them in the future.
Based in Burien, Washington, Food Circle is a digital food rescue organization that uses volunteers to transport food from donors to food pantries and meal programs. Food Circle recognizes that the way the B2B food industry currently functions is often inefficient and lacks transparency when it comes to information about products and pricing. Food Circle started during the outbreak of COVID-19, which amplified the food industry’s flaws. Food Circle employee Amy Fauner noted, “part of the reason that we started doing this was that the pandemic made it very obvious that our food system is broken.” Food Circle successfully created an efficient, reliable, and innovative platform that connects suppliers and buyers with professionalism and transparency in the wholesale organic food industry. Committed to helping reduce the effects of climate change, Food Circle also supports programs that promote sustainable development. This includes the portion of their profits they donate to ShareTheMeal, a nonprofit run by the United Nations World Food Programme. Food Circle will send the apples that The Farmlink Project helped to deliver from Apple King to food banks and meal programs across the Seattle area.
These 17,480 pounds of apples will contribute toward both organizations fulfilling their overarching goal of serving families and individuals in need with high-quality produce. The Farmlink Project would like to thank Apple King for their meaningful and impressive work on the farm and Food Circle for working toward reforming the flaws in the food industry.