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On Monday The Farmlink Project was featured on the Ellen show!

During the last week of January, The Farmlink Project’s co-founder Aidan Reilly received an unusual direct message on Instagram: an invite to possibly be featured on T.V. talk show Ellen. The producer had encountered a CBS piece about The Farmlink Project, and thought The Farmlink Project would be a great organization to feature on Ellen. Despite coming from the show’s producer, Aidan was unsure whether the message would lead to an actual feature on the Ellen Show. The producer scheduled and recorded a Zoom call with Aidan, but prefaced it by saying that this meeting did not mean much and he shouldn’t get his hopes up.

Three weeks after the initial interview, Aidan heard from the producer that Ellen herself loved The Farmlink Project’s story and wanted to feature Aidan on her show. Ellen’s team invited Aidan to their studio on February 22nd, but Aidan had no clue what to expect when showing up. He sat for two and a half hours in the green room while he watched other guests go up on stage and he waited for his turn, until a producer rushed him to a make-up room and pushed him out onto stage.

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Ellen and Aidan’s conversation outlined the founding of The Farmlink Project as well as the organization’s current goals. At the end of the segment, Aidan, on behalf of The Farmlink Project, received a $15,000 check donation from the organization TisBest!

_{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.