From the beginning, Lindsay Carlin has shown to be unstoppable. When she first applied to be a member of the internal team for the summer 2020 term, Lindsay was not offered a position, but a few months later, she applied again, saying to me recently that she “wanted to be a part of this project so badly that [she] decided to risk embarrassing herself.” Lindsay joined the Food Insecurity Team (now called the Hunger Outreach Team or HOT) in the fall, initially doing research and eventually moving to placing loads of produce. Once the Farms Team identified surplus produce, she called hunger relief organizations to inquire if they could accept the food and, if they could, helped coordinate the logistics of how to get it to them. “That was so far from what I expected to be doing,” Lindsay said, “because things go wrong all the time with deliveries, and you have to be the one to figure it out.” It was the “polar opposite” of the research work she had previously done, and Lindsay loved the rush of it.
Lindsay stepped up to lead the Hunger Outreach Team in December. She is renowned for her “firefighting”—Farmlink jargon for problem-solving that always requires speed, often takes patience, sometimes takes creativity, and is never easy. She laughed when I asked her about some of her best firefighting stories: a testament to her cheerfulness even in the face of obstacles. She took a deep breath before saying, “Wow, well, there are a lot.”
More importantly, according to HOT member Clayton Elbel, “she is truly a leader of character.” He added that she works “for the common good, regardless of whether it is seen or heard.” It’s no secret that Lindsay works hard—she is everywhere: meetings, team socials, Slack channels. It feels as though every day someone mentions Lindsay in the #shoutouts channel, a place for Farmlinkers to share others’ successes, express gratitude, and give each other the credit they deserve. If Lindsay herself isn’t being shouted-out for some heroic placement, she’s spreading the love to other teammates in the channel. In one year, the number of Slack messages Lindsay has sent surpassed 23,000 (which makes her the most active Slack member by a landslide, tallying up to almost 10,000 messages more than the second most frequent Slack-er, who has a total of about 14,000 messages over a longer duration of time).
This fall, after a full year at The Farmlink Project, Lindsay will be stepping away from her role as Hunger Outreach Team lead. “It’s made me a lot more mature,” 19-year-old Lindsay said of her time at The Farmlink Project, “and it’s helped me become more confident as a person—more comfortable in my own skin and more comfortable being myself.” She also credited “the people,” within and outside of the organization, with giving her perspective on what she values and what she wants to do with her education and career. She highlighted that “it’s made me realize that we need to pay a lot more attention…actually investigate why people are facing these issues and how we can help.”
The Farmlink Project, Lindsay shared, has changed the way she looks at the world and, she added, “that’s not something that you can reverse.” When she walks into a grocery store, Lindsay examines produce labels to see if they came from farms we have sourced produce from. She pays more attention to each of the elements of the food supply chain and consequences on “the earth, the people harvesting the food, the people who are driving the food from point A to point B that we as a society don’t think about.”
Lindsay’s impact on this organization, similarly, is irreversible. “Since she joined The Farmlink Project,” Core Pillar Lead Ben Collier said, “there has not been a person who has been more attentive to peoples’ needs: that includes members of the organization who she leads on the Hunger Outreach Team, those in the organization she is not responsible for but wants to see succeed, and the hundreds we work with outside of Farmlink who she cares so deeply about.” Lindsay will be missed, but she assured me that while she is stepping away from her role, she will most definitely be visiting.
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.
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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.
< BackFrom the beginning, Lindsay Carlin has shown to be unstoppable. When she first applied to be a member of the internal team for the summer 2020 term, Lindsay was not offered a position, but a few months later, she applied again, saying to me recently that she “wanted to be a part of this project so badly that [she] decided to risk embarrassing herself.” Lindsay joined the Food Insecurity Team (now called the Hunger Outreach Team or HOT) in the fall, initially doing research and eventually moving to placing loads of produce. Once the Farms Team identified surplus produce, she called hunger relief organizations to inquire if they could accept the food and, if they could, helped coordinate the logistics of how to get it to them. “That was so far from what I expected to be doing,” Lindsay said, “because things go wrong all the time with deliveries, and you have to be the one to figure it out.” It was the “polar opposite” of the research work she had previously done, and Lindsay loved the rush of it.
Lindsay stepped up to lead the Hunger Outreach Team in December. She is renowned for her “firefighting”—Farmlink jargon for problem-solving that always requires speed, often takes patience, sometimes takes creativity, and is never easy. She laughed when I asked her about some of her best firefighting stories: a testament to her cheerfulness even in the face of obstacles. She took a deep breath before saying, “Wow, well, there are a lot.”
More importantly, according to HOT member Clayton Elbel, “she is truly a leader of character.” He added that she works “for the common good, regardless of whether it is seen or heard.” It’s no secret that Lindsay works hard—she is everywhere: meetings, team socials, Slack channels. It feels as though every day someone mentions Lindsay in the #shoutouts channel, a place for Farmlinkers to share others’ successes, express gratitude, and give each other the credit they deserve. If Lindsay herself isn’t being shouted-out for some heroic placement, she’s spreading the love to other teammates in the channel. In one year, the number of Slack messages Lindsay has sent surpassed 23,000 (which makes her the most active Slack member by a landslide, tallying up to almost 10,000 messages more than the second most frequent Slack-er, who has a total of about 14,000 messages over a longer duration of time).
This fall, after a full year at The Farmlink Project, Lindsay will be stepping away from her role as Hunger Outreach Team lead. “It’s made me a lot more mature,” 19-year-old Lindsay said of her time at The Farmlink Project, “and it’s helped me become more confident as a person—more comfortable in my own skin and more comfortable being myself.” She also credited “the people,” within and outside of the organization, with giving her perspective on what she values and what she wants to do with her education and career. She highlighted that “it’s made me realize that we need to pay a lot more attention…actually investigate why people are facing these issues and how we can help.”
The Farmlink Project, Lindsay shared, has changed the way she looks at the world and, she added, “that’s not something that you can reverse.” When she walks into a grocery store, Lindsay examines produce labels to see if they came from farms we have sourced produce from. She pays more attention to each of the elements of the food supply chain and consequences on “the earth, the people harvesting the food, the people who are driving the food from point A to point B that we as a society don’t think about.”
Lindsay’s impact on this organization, similarly, is irreversible. “Since she joined The Farmlink Project,” Core Pillar Lead Ben Collier said, “there has not been a person who has been more attentive to peoples’ needs: that includes members of the organization who she leads on the Hunger Outreach Team, those in the organization she is not responsible for but wants to see succeed, and the hundreds we work with outside of Farmlink who she cares so deeply about.” Lindsay will be missed, but she assured me that while she is stepping away from her role, she will most definitely be visiting.
Lindsay Carlin
Hunger Outreach Team Lead
From the beginning, Lindsay Carlin has shown to be unstoppable. When she first applied to be a member of the internal team for the summer 2020 term, Lindsay was not offered a position, but a few months later, she applied again, saying to me recently that she “wanted to be a part of this project so badly that [she] decided to risk embarrassing herself.” Lindsay joined the Food Insecurity Team (now called the Hunger Outreach Team or HOT) in the fall, initially doing research and eventually moving to placing loads of produce. Once the Farms Team identified surplus produce, she called hunger relief organizations to inquire if they could accept the food and, if they could, helped coordinate the logistics of how to get it to them. “That was so far from what I expected to be doing,” Lindsay said, “because things go wrong all the time with deliveries, and you have to be the one to figure it out.” It was the “polar opposite” of the research work she had previously done, and Lindsay loved the rush of it.
Lindsay stepped up to lead the Hunger Outreach Team in December. She is renowned for her “firefighting”—Farmlink jargon for problem-solving that always requires speed, often takes patience, sometimes takes creativity, and is never easy. She laughed when I asked her about some of her best firefighting stories: a testament to her cheerfulness even in the face of obstacles. She took a deep breath before saying, “Wow, well, there are a lot.”
More importantly, according to HOT member Clayton Elbel, “she is truly a leader of character.” He added that she works “for the common good, regardless of whether it is seen or heard.” It’s no secret that Lindsay works hard—she is everywhere: meetings, team socials, Slack channels. It feels as though every day someone mentions Lindsay in the #shoutouts channel, a place for Farmlinkers to share others’ successes, express gratitude, and give each other the credit they deserve. If Lindsay herself isn’t being shouted-out for some heroic placement, she’s spreading the love to other teammates in the channel. In one year, the number of Slack messages Lindsay has sent surpassed 23,000 (which makes her the most active Slack member by a landslide, tallying up to almost 10,000 messages more than the second most frequent Slack-er, who has a total of about 14,000 messages over a longer duration of time).
This fall, after a full year at The Farmlink Project, Lindsay will be stepping away from her role as Hunger Outreach Team lead. “It’s made me a lot more mature,” 19-year-old Lindsay said of her time at The Farmlink Project, “and it’s helped me become more confident as a person—more comfortable in my own skin and more comfortable being myself.” She also credited “the people,” within and outside of the organization, with giving her perspective on what she values and what she wants to do with her education and career. She highlighted that “it’s made me realize that we need to pay a lot more attention…actually investigate why people are facing these issues and how we can help.”
The Farmlink Project, Lindsay shared, has changed the way she looks at the world and, she added, “that’s not something that you can reverse.” When she walks into a grocery store, Lindsay examines produce labels to see if they came from farms we have sourced produce from. She pays more attention to each of the elements of the food supply chain and consequences on “the earth, the people harvesting the food, the people who are driving the food from point A to point B that we as a society don’t think about.”
Lindsay’s impact on this organization, similarly, is irreversible. “Since she joined The Farmlink Project,” Core Pillar Lead Ben Collier said, “there has not been a person who has been more attentive to peoples’ needs: that includes members of the organization who she leads on the Hunger Outreach Team, those in the organization she is not responsible for but wants to see succeed, and the hundreds we work with outside of Farmlink who she cares so deeply about.” Lindsay will be missed, but she assured me that while she is stepping away from her role, she will most definitely be visiting.
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