Our largest
rescue yet.
36 million apples were almost left to rot in West Virginia. Now, they'll be delivered directly from farms to communities facing food insecurity.
Who is struggling
to afford groceries?
A little over four years ago, a few of us set off on an RV trip across the country to better understand the needs of farmers, food banks leaders, and recipients. We drove over 10,000 miles, spanning 20 states, and had hundreds of interesting conversations with people across the supply chain. But there’s one moment that still sticks with us four years later. While pushing shopping carts in the hot parking of the Inspired Vision Compassion Center, a Walmart-sized food bank in Dallas, I’ll never forget seeing four nurses line up for food during their lunch break. During the largest health crisis in a century, here were the heroes of the pandemic, not earning enough money to afford food.
This year, we decided to set out to meet some of the 44 million Americans struggling to put food on the table today.
Our journey starts in Blythedale, Missouri, a town with rolling hills and more cows than people.
Coy Young
4th Generation Cattle Rancher
Coy Young, a fourth-generation cattle rancher, carries deep pride in his family’s legacy of feeding people.
So what had changed?
Each year, thousands of ranchers lose their livelihoods in similar fashion and a significant amount of meat production is moving overseas.
Recently, a large private equity company purchased the farm many of the women at the distribution work at and restructured their wages and hours.
Farmworkers are amongst the least protected of all workers in the country and are all too frequently victims of sexual violence, wage theft, and grueling days spent in the heat.
“We feed the whole nation, and we just want to be valued” she told me as she passed out a box of food.
Despite her circumstances, Oliva volunteers regularly to distribute free nutritious food to families in a similar situation. She takes a great deal of pride in being part of the solution and has an unwavering determination to ensure her kids live good lives.
Your donations to The Farmlink Project allow us to send food to communities in Bakersfield every month.
For the last stop on our trip, we visited Rhonda, an Elementary School counselor based in Dallas, TX. Rhonda works in a low income community and is the only counselor for nearly 700 students. She’s a key mentor to many of the students as they navigate a community struggling with gang violence and food insecurity.
The Counselor
Rhonda began her career as a cafeteria worker and worked her way up. Even though she’s now a counselor, she told us that her salary is sometimes not enough to cover her basic needs. She frequently volunteers at the Inspired Vision Compassion Center (the food bank we visited in 2020) and is sometimes a recipient of the free food as well. As grocery prices soar, food banks are a lifeline for Rhonda and the 6.7 million people working in the public school system, as many working in underserved communities are not seeing their salaries match inflation.
Food is what allows people to persevere. It can be the fuel that allows Rhonda to help a student who is struggling with an abusive parent. It allows Oliva’s kids to go to school on a full stomach so that they can go to college and create a better life for their family. It can help cattle ranchers like Coy get back on their feet to do what they love.