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We’re at COP28! See where to find us, resources, insights, and our desired outcomes for the conference.
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.
He cares for his cattle as if they were family, but he told us how, beginning in the early 2000s, he felt the ground shifting beneath him. Auction prices for cattle were plummeting, and by 2020, he was nearly $90,000 in debt. When he went to sell his strongest herd, he expected to clear $130,000 but came home with just $35,000. It was then that he realized the future of the American cattle rancher was in jeopardy.
So what had changed?
This crisis traces back to rising costs and “The Big Four”—four major corporations controlling the packing houses that process meat. With their grip on pricing at auction and retail levels, they squeeze independent ranchers like Coy while driving up prices for consumers. Coy told us about the day he sold his last cow, one he’d raised and cared for deeply. He cried that day. After four generations, he was forced out of the life he’d known. Sadly, Coy’s story isn’t unique.
Each year, thousands of ranchers lose their livelihoods in similar fashion and a significant amount of meat production is moving overseas.
They join a new group of middle class Americans who are scrambling to put food on the table.
Coy has low hopes for the future of the American cattle rancher, but his actions say otherwise. He testified last year in front of Congress, despite significant pressure from the Big Four to stay silent. Coy also runs a support group for other ranchers where they discuss ways to keep each other in business and has recently pivoted into catering to keep himself afloat. His dedication set the tone for what we encountered as we continued our journey.
In Bakersfield, we began to see a pattern forming.
The Farmworkers
We visited a United Farmworker’s food distribution and talked to Oliva, a mother with decades of experience working in the fields. Oliva says that she sometimes takes home $200-300 per week after accounting for gas costs to get to work. She does her best to support her children with the money they have, but sometimes it isn’t enough. She and her kids know what it’s like to go to bed hungry.
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.
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.
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