By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
Staff Writer
A federal food box program set to end with the year is being taken over by Vermont Foodbank, which plans to fund it through February.
Nicole Whalen, director of communications and public affairs at Vermont Foodbank, said Monday that the organization has allocated $1.4 million to continue the Farmers to Families Food Box program for the first two months of 2021.
“The experience will be very much the same for customers, the people participating in the program,” said Whalen. “The only difference they’ll see is probably higher quality food and local food.”
The program got started in May as an initiative by the United States Department of Agriculture to address both farmers losing their markets to the coronavirus pandemic and related food insecurity. The USDA purchased the food from farmers to be distributed to those in need.
“The Farmers to Families Food Box program has been a huge, huge help to the community during the pandemic and it is estimated to bring about 5.5 million pounds of fresh food to the state of Vermont between when the program began in May and the end of this calendar year,” said Whalen. “The federal government has not extended the program, so we have been looking at the looming date of Jan. 1 with a huge deal of concern for people who are relying on that program.”
The program is giving out 500 boxes of food per day at distribution sites around the state. People have to sign up ahead of time at bit.ly/1221Food
Whalen said the Foodbank has been considering this for a while, given how the USDA has run the program. For one, it was thought to end in October, but the USDA extended it. Another facet was the USDA awarding bids for distribution every two months. At first, Abbey Group, a Vermont company, was purchasing food for the boxes from mostly local sources, however the last two rounds were awarded to out-of-state companies who used little to no local food.
“(W)e’re excited that we’re going to work with the Abbey Group, which is a local, Vermont contractor,” said Whalen. “We were able to work with them in its early stages, but since then the USDA shifted to give Vermont’s contract to out-of-state distributors which was challenging for a lot of reasons and not as good for Vermont’s economy because they were not prioritizing buying local food. But now we have control over it because we’re doing it ourselves.”
Whalen said community support has left the Foodbank feeling like it can manage this for January and February. She noted that a $4.7 million allocated to the Foodbank from the CARES Act could not go directly to this effort, as those funds must be spent by the end of the year, but it did leave the bank with some confidence, that along with a $9 million donation, announced last week, from billionaire philanthropist, MacKenzie Scott.
“We’re keeping the money here in the state of Vermont and the Abbey Group is going to purchase as much food as possible from local Vermont farmers and producers and it’s going to be well over 50% of the food that’s in the boxes will be local,” she said.
Angus Baldwin, of West Farm in Jeffersonville, is a vegetable farmer who had been working with the program early on by selling to the Abbey Group. West Farm is part of the Deep Root Organics cooperative, which Baldwin has held a leadership role in.
“It’s certainly an opportunity for farms like myself and others to pack out and sell to the program root vegetables we have stored up in anticipation of hopefully selling them,” said Baldwin, adding that the program was always great for getting food to those in need, but when it used out-of-state distributors it stopped being much of a boon to the state’s agriculture industry.
Nina Hansen, vice president of operations at the Abbey Group, said she was pleased when Vermont Foodbank solicited a bid for the work and even happier to learn Friday her company had won it.
“I definitely had tears in my eyes,” she said. “We were just thrilled to do that. We love our partnership with the Foodbank and to be able to spread the generosity around Vermont.”
Hansen said there will be as many local products in the boxes as possible and that the Abbey Group will be able to hire on a few people to pack and distribute them.
keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com
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