We are currently in the middle of the largest rescue we have ever done, and one of the largest food recovery efforts in history.

Over the last six weeks, we took on a massive challenge. When all of their contracts were dropped right before harvest, 11 apple growers in West Virginia faced enormous losses and potential bankruptcy. Millions of pounds of apples suddenly had no buyers, and nowhere to go. Farmers faced a situation many of them had never anticipated: their crop was going to go to waste.

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A chance encounter between Senator Manchin and one of our farmer heroes provided a glimmer of hope. After learning about the precarious position these farmers were in, Senator Manchin brought together the USDA and West Virginia Department of Agriculture to rally financial support for farmers to harvest the apples. There was one condition: the apples must be donated to hunger fighting charities. However, the compensation package did not cover all harvesting, packaging, transportation, and delivery costs of the apples; that's where Farmlink stepped in.

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We faced a challenge we could never have imagined: ‘can Farmlink rescue and deliver 16 million pounds of apples, directly from farms, to hunger fighting charities in less than two months?’

We weren’t sure if we could do it. But our scrappy optimism that is so tightly wound into Farmlink’s DNA meant we had to try. We delivered the first truck load of apples on September 29th.

With each day, we find out we are capable of much much more than we ever thought…

We’ve crunched the numbers and predict that to recover all available apples will cost Farmlink nearly 1 million dollars. The impact of this recovery will have profound implications for the farmers involved, the recipient communities, and Farmlink’s future work with local, state and federal governments to lend support.

To rescue the remaining apples and prepare for future opportunities to support farmers and feed families, we turn to you: our community in this fight against hunger and waste. We’re a couple hundred truckloads down, with many more to go.

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_{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.