Carlos Medina, founder and CEO of Vida Life Ministries, has seen the number of people that the organization serves quadruple as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vida Life Ministries opens at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings, but cars begin to line up by 2:00 a.m. This unsettling increase in demand isn’t just happening at Vida Life; according to Carlos, “all the large food banks know each other, and we’re all seeing the same patterns.” Vida Life Ministries supplies 285 “extension agencies,” mostly located in the San Bernardino, California area. Across all of their locations, Carlos and his team serve to 48,000 families per month (rounding out to over 200,000 individuals). In addition to providing food––each box containing over $250 worth of groceries––Vida Life Ministries helps families secure water, dry goods, and even furniture.

When asked what his priorities are in the work he does, Carlos said that he hopes that “families that are in need, that are struggling, will use us for the short term, until they get out of their situation.” His favorite thing is when people start “paying it forward” as few as two or three years later; 99.9 percent of his volunteers, Carlos said, are people who once depended on Vida Life Ministries for food themselves. It’s the people that are appreciative, he noted, the people that thank him profusely, that make the work he does so gratifying.

Since August, The Farmlink Project has facilitated the transportation of over 445,000 pounds of fresh produce to Vida Life Ministries. Carlos emphasized the importance of supplying his patrons with nutritious food; in San Bernardino County, 1 in 5 residents were food insecure as of July 2020.

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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.