Ditch the Food Box Program. Help Food Bank Networks Instead.
September 01, 2020
The well-intentioned federal Farmers to Family Food Box program, created to help families and farmers during the pandemic, is an unnecessarily wasteful program. It would be much better to shift the three billion dollars in federal funds currently being used for food boxes and directly subsidize the nation’s philanthropically supported food banks. This would enable them to continue to serve people in need through their long-standing and well-established networks of food pantries, soup kitchens, local faith-based organizations, among other groups.
Food banks and food pantries have long helped hungry families whose needs were not met by major federal nutrition policies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and school breakfast and lunch programs. Prior to COVID-19, food banks were supplying hungry families with one meal for every nine meals supported by SNAP payments.
Since the onset of the pandemic, millions of bread winners have lost their jobs and turned to food banks to feed their children as schools have closed and access to SNAP, school meals, and other safety net programs have been disrupted. This has resulted in the doubling — and in some cases the quadrupling — of demands on food banks and other pantries. Despite this, federal funding only increased by just under $900 million, about one percent of the $85 billion dollars and more spent this year on major federal nutrition initiatives such as SNAP and school meals programs.
Instead, Congress authorized the US Department of Agriculture to spend over three times as much on a new and untested $3 billion Food Box program. The March 17th Families First Coronavirus Response Act stipulates that these funds be used to hire private sector organizations, many of them for-profit firms, to buy meat, dairy products and vegetables no longer wanted by the market, ideally directly from farms.
On paper, the Food Box program appears to solve everyone’s problem: feeding the millions of hungry families while media outlets were flooded with photos of dairy farmers in Pennsylvania pouring unsold milk down their drains and Florida horticultural operators ploughing unharvested squash and tomatoes back into the soil, as demand dried up when restaurants and other food service operations shut down.
Under the new program, Food Box firms pack up the produce and use local non-profit philanthropic organizations to distribute the boxes to hungry families. These organizations include food banks, food pantries, faith-based organizations, and even local government agencies such as school districts. Ironically, the most widely used local delivery points for food boxes turn out to be food banks and their distribution networks.
The Food Box program has thus created an entirely new and unnecessary layer of private sector “distributors” that are increasing the costs of delivering food to families in need.
Also, in practice, many of the organizations awarded Food Box distribution contracts had little or no experience in the food distribution business. The result has been the occurrence of relatively widespread, well-documented cases of inadequate or non-performance. A program intended to deliver 40 million food boxes by the end June, had sent out only about 17 million boxes by June 17th, though the program was then extended through August, and more boxes have been delivered to local organizations. Despite these efforts, the fundamental inefficiency of creating a new array of food distributors by bureaucratic fiat instead of relying on well-established distribution channels remains highly problematic.
Another concern is that many of the boxes being sent to local organizations cannot be handed as is to families in need. USDA’s initial allocation of contracts to distributors, mandated that 38% of the program’s budget had to be used for fruits and vegetables boxes, 26% for dairy boxes, and 21% for meat boxes. Only 14% was allocated for combination boxes that include all three categories.
This approach is questionable. First, most families need a broad mix of foods, such as canned and packaged dry goods (soups, stewed tomatoes, and other canned fruits and vegetables for example), flour, rice, and pasta in addition to fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. Food banks and other local organizations are therefore repackaging Food Box contents to meet the real needs of the households they serve, placing additional stress on financial and volunteer resources that are already overstretched. Second, the Food Box distributors represent an additional step in the food supply chain that increases the risk of spoiling the fresh produce they are required to purchase.
Third, Food Box firms have generally sourced their produce for the boxes directly from commercial food processors and distributors that food banks would also use, not from farms that have been forced to leave produce rotting in the fields or pour milk down the drain. So, the impact of the Food Box program on farm incomes, the program’s other goal, are minimal. Moreover, COVID-19-related losses incurred by farms are being directly addressed by Congress in many other ways. These include long-standing federal subsidy programs that have been around for years, and the additional $16 billion authorized by the CARES act meant to compensate certain farms, producing livestock and dozens of crops, for COVID-19 related losses.
If food banks and their networks are the most efficient and effective groups to reach hungry families not sufficiently benefiting from other programs like SNAP, please end the Food Box program and send all new funds directly to food banks and food pantries. Allow the food banks to use the monies in ways that work best for the families they serve, buying from the cheapest and best sources available, and allowing efficient markets to do their job. Those food banks can then collaborate with their well-established networks of food pantries, soup kitchens, and local faith-based and other charitable organizations to deliver the food to the millions of families and children needing help during – and even beyond – the pandemic.
