March 5, 2021
Food bank operators and lawmakers are pushing President Joe Biden’s administration for systematic changes to the federal food box program to help feed hungry Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. Nonprofit leaders also foresee a future need for continued government assistance, even when the nation finally recovers from Covid-19. “The nationwide network of food banks really are dependent upon government food right now,” said Pamela Irvine, president and CEO of Feeding Southwest Virginia. Her nonprofit has received about 1 million pounds of food through the Farmers to Families Food Box program—an Agriculture Department initiative that buys and distributes boxes of produce, meat, and dairy to food banks in an effort to help families put food on the table and give agriculture producers an economic boost…Overall, the initiative helped mitigate distributor job loss, involved small-to-mid-sized farms initially, reduced food waste to an extent, and made improvements in its first four rounds, according to a February report by Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The program should make adjustments to step up support for minority- and women-owned farms, compensate small and specialty farms adequately, and restore non-combination boxes—those consisting solely of either produce, meat, or dairy—among other provisions, the groups recommended. “With changes, this Program also could serve as the model for a long-term food system solution,” said professor Emily Broad Leib, the faculty director for the Food Law and Policy Clinic.