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Food banks / supply chain
Sep. 21st, 2020 01:24 pmI have had on my to do list a check-the-news-on-food-banks for a couple weeks now (honestly, probably longer!). Early on, food banks were worried because of increased need, which was in part helped by the bigger unemployment check payments and the loosened rules for collecting unemployment. Early on, farmers and food distributors who served restaurants were anguished when their markets dried up. Redirecting to the retail / grocery store distribution chain took time.
One of the steps taken was a USDA program that collected food that would once have gone to restaurants and redirected it to people who were running drive up food distribution: food banks, school systems and other organizations, some of whom had never run a food distribution program. There were issues, but they have largely been resolved, or at least incrementally mitigated over time.
Here is a link to USDA describing their program:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/selling-food-to-usda/farmers-to-families-food-box
The failure to pass a renewal of the additional amount of money distributed through unemployment is worrying food banks, and those concerned about food insecurity are also very worried because in-person schools are largely not in person still. This puts more load on food banks, which are not prepared to deal with that much demand.
Here is a great summary article from a couple weeks ago.
https://apnews.com/bff84da3c08200f6560c7245877de2d7
I will also be looking around for additional coverage. It is nice to see that USDA was able to hook up farmers who had lost their buyers, and people who could not afford to buy food, and make it all happen. This is something that is difficult or impossible to do, other than at the national level. Which does not mean that people do not try!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/14/metro/students-link-farms-food-banks-avoid-waste-amid-pandemic/
This is an extremely decentralized non-profit operating primarily over things like zoom, to connect farmers, donors and food banks.
“In a certain way, the isolating nature of our environment made it easier for The Farmlink Project to become a national group. From day one, we communicated over Zoom and Slack. This dissolved any barrier to entry and allowed for all our volunteers to have engaged involvement across dozens of states.”
In addition to bolting the two components (farms with food, food banks that need food), they help with the costs:
“If a farmer is not able to donate their food, we aim to cover PPO (Pick and Pack Out) costs, which effectively are the costs associated with harvesting, preparing, and packaging the food. We also work to help them capitalize on the tax relief unlocked when they work with us. We always cover the cost of transportation. We want to ensure that our farmers get to their next harvest, and help keep their workers employed.”
FarmLink is working on setting up its tax-deductibility status; in the meantime, they have a fiscal sponsor so if you want to donate, you can.
ETAYA: Stumbled across while researching food banks:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030504832030654X
I really do not know what I think about this. I guess, yay, someone is devoting time, thought and computational resources to a problem among those all too often ignored? OTOH, I shudder to think at what changes they might be proposing. *shrug* If someone does this in real life, I hope they put together a mechanism for collecting feedback and baselinining.
Other things I noticed: there are some concerns that if/as schools start up in person and quit doing the drive up stuff, the food banks are going to get slammed by all the families that _were_ getting boxes and whatnot through driveups run by schools. We should _really_ rethink a lot of this.
One of the steps taken was a USDA program that collected food that would once have gone to restaurants and redirected it to people who were running drive up food distribution: food banks, school systems and other organizations, some of whom had never run a food distribution program. There were issues, but they have largely been resolved, or at least incrementally mitigated over time.
Here is a link to USDA describing their program:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/selling-food-to-usda/farmers-to-families-food-box
The failure to pass a renewal of the additional amount of money distributed through unemployment is worrying food banks, and those concerned about food insecurity are also very worried because in-person schools are largely not in person still. This puts more load on food banks, which are not prepared to deal with that much demand.
Here is a great summary article from a couple weeks ago.
https://apnews.com/bff84da3c08200f6560c7245877de2d7
I will also be looking around for additional coverage. It is nice to see that USDA was able to hook up farmers who had lost their buyers, and people who could not afford to buy food, and make it all happen. This is something that is difficult or impossible to do, other than at the national level. Which does not mean that people do not try!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/14/metro/students-link-farms-food-banks-avoid-waste-amid-pandemic/
This is an extremely decentralized non-profit operating primarily over things like zoom, to connect farmers, donors and food banks.
“In a certain way, the isolating nature of our environment made it easier for The Farmlink Project to become a national group. From day one, we communicated over Zoom and Slack. This dissolved any barrier to entry and allowed for all our volunteers to have engaged involvement across dozens of states.”
In addition to bolting the two components (farms with food, food banks that need food), they help with the costs:
“If a farmer is not able to donate their food, we aim to cover PPO (Pick and Pack Out) costs, which effectively are the costs associated with harvesting, preparing, and packaging the food. We also work to help them capitalize on the tax relief unlocked when they work with us. We always cover the cost of transportation. We want to ensure that our farmers get to their next harvest, and help keep their workers employed.”
FarmLink is working on setting up its tax-deductibility status; in the meantime, they have a fiscal sponsor so if you want to donate, you can.
ETAYA: Stumbled across while researching food banks:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030504832030654X
I really do not know what I think about this. I guess, yay, someone is devoting time, thought and computational resources to a problem among those all too often ignored? OTOH, I shudder to think at what changes they might be proposing. *shrug* If someone does this in real life, I hope they put together a mechanism for collecting feedback and baselinining.
Other things I noticed: there are some concerns that if/as schools start up in person and quit doing the drive up stuff, the food banks are going to get slammed by all the families that _were_ getting boxes and whatnot through driveups run by schools. We should _really_ rethink a lot of this.