By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
RUTLAND HERALD
A food-box program with its roots in the early days of the pandemic will end Thursday.
Since June, the Full Plates VT program has distributed 40,000 boxes of food all across Vermont, according to the Vermont Foodbank, which coordinated the effort after the program’s federal predecessor ended.
Full Plates VT is the state version of a federal program — Farmers to Families Food Box — which ended in May after running for about a year. Overseen by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Farmers to Families program had two goals: feed people left hungry by the pandemic and give those in the food industry, notably farmers, who’d seen their usual markets shut down, a place to sell their meat and produce.
The Vermont Foodbank, working with private, state and other partners, coordinated food distribution events, many at state airports, where folks lined up in cars, in some cases for miles, to have their vehicles loaded with boxes of food containing poultry, fruit, vegetables and dairy items. The Abbey Group, a Vermont-based company, won the initial bid to supply food for the boxes. The Agency of Transportation and Vermont National Guard worked with Vermont Foodbank to secure and staff the distribution sites.
During the next few months, the distribution process was refined, moving away from the first-come-first-served lines at airports to an online or phone-in pre-registration system.
The program’s only real controversy came when the USDA began awarding bids to out-of-state food distribution companies. Near the end of 2020, it was announced that the Abbey Group would no longer be the lead distributor for the USDA program in Vermont. The USDA awarded contracts for the food-box program in two month stints. In September, the Vermont Foodbank and others raised concerns after the bid went to Costa Fruit and Produce, a Boston company, and later, Sysco, a company based in Texas. The companies were awarded bids for Vermont and other Northeastern states. Local hunger advocates lamented that the food in the boxes wouldn’t be from Vermont producers, and some said the quality of the food wasn’t as good. Vermont’s Congressional leaders took the issue up with the USDA, but the federal program ended without much change.
It was estimated that the federal program distributed 5.5 million pounds of food in Vermont.
The Vermont Foodbank ultimately carried on with the program, working with the Abbey Group to distribute the federally-sourced food.
“A lot of people liked it and were getting a lot of value out of the box program,” said John Sayles, chief executive officer of the Vermont Foodbank, on Tuesday. “We had very few drops during this Full Plates VT where all the boxes weren’t spoken for. There was a little time in the beginning when people got used to the transition but this last month everything was fully subscribed.”
Those who still need help getting food have a number of resources available to them, Sayles said. The Foodbank’s website, vtfoodbank.org/gethelp, has a list of places where people can get help, or they can call 833-670-2254.
“It’s going to feel abrupt to people, but the resources are there, it’s just a transition in how you access them,” said Sayles.
He said the food programs worked best when Vermont Foodbank was able to work with local partners.
Overall, the food boxes were a learning experience for the organization.
“It really has changed the way we’re looking at the work that we do at the Foodbank with food distribution,” said Sayles. “We learned a lot of things not only about our capacity to make changes and do things differently, but also what do people desire and need who are getting this food.”
keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com
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