Does a box filled with half-and-half count as food aid?
A scathing report finds the Farmers to Families Food Box program sent millions of taxpayer dollars to unqualified distributors.
In May 2020, after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the first-round winners of contracts in its pandemic-relief program designed to send surplus food to needy families, journalists quickly zeroed in on companies that didn’t exactly seem well-suited to spring into emergency food distribution mode.
One of the most eye-raising was a $40 million award that went to Ben Holtz Consulting, doing business as “California Avocados Direct,” a company that grows and ships—you guessed it—avocados.
Now, a year and a half later, a report released by the majority staff of the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis has revealed more details, showing that the agency probably could have garnered from Holtz’s application that he wasn’t quite the right guy for the job. In a section of the application that asked for references (three were technically required to participate), he scrawled, “I don’t have any.”
Before Holtz packed his first Farmers to Families Food Box, the USDA did rescind that contract, but the Committee uncovered a mountain of evidence showing other unqualified distributors sent rotting food in commercial portion sizes to pantries that had nowhere to store it and received taxpayer money in exchange for milk that was never delivered. One Texas food pantry reported a contractor sent Dairy Boxes—a category that was supposed to include a selection of milk, cheese, and yogurt for struggling families—that were completely filled with half-and-half.
The Committee also found that Trump’s USDA didn’t do much at all to make sure the food was actually getting to families hit the hardest by the pandemic, but it did have time to (likely illegally) use the program as a campaign tool.
The Biden administration ended the program on May 31, 2021, but I was interested in the report because of the crazy details (half-and-half qualifying as food aid is just the beginning!) and because it’s an interesting example of a shoddily designed, mismanaged program...that also did a lot of good.
Last year, I reported multiple times on how regional food hubs and farmer organizations were able to direct lots of money to local produce and dairy farms while sending a lot of fresh, healthy food to hungry families. In fact, other outside reports have suggested the success local food hubs demonstrated through the program showed they should play a bigger role in future emergency food aid efforts.
Government programs, perhaps unsurprisingly, are a messy business that can be both effective to the point of transformative and taken advantage of to the point of flat-out fraud.
Unwrapped
To review, the Farmers to Families Food Box program was one of the many initiatives launched as a result of the USDA getting a bunch of money from Congress for COVID-19 relief. The idea behind it was simple and seemed to have merit at its core: food insecurity was skyrocketing and cars were lining up at food banks, while farmers were dumping milk and leaving crops to rot in fields. According to the report, “if operating as intended, the program would effectively address two crises at once—America’s hunger epidemic and the deep economic harm to farmers and food distributors.”
Previous reports (not compiled by politicians, it should be noted) also gave the USDA credit for the speed with which it initiated the program at a time when everyone was just figuring out how to operate amid the pandemic and found that many of the issues could be attributed to how quickly it was rolled out.
But the Select Committee Democrats were not as forgiving. The report focused specifically on $95.5 million initially awarded to three companies: the $40 million for Ben Holtz Consulting, $39.9 awarded to CRE8AD8, and $16.5 million that went to Yegg, Inc.
Like the red flags in Ben Holtz’s application, it found that the USDA could have easily determined the others were not qualified. CRE8ADA8 is a wedding and event planning company with no food storage or distribution infrastructure; Yegg described its business as “export management” and “trade finance” and had just 10 employees and no delivery trucks. At the same time, many actual produce distributors applied and did not receive contracts.
Once they were up and running, Texas food banks reported that CREA8AD8 sent food boxes that were not kept at food safe temperatures and that were filled with food families would not know how to use, like a whole box of unlabeled commercial chicken pieces in giant bags. (The report also notes the initial idea for the program was likely floated by the National Chicken Council as a way to use surplus chicken. Interesting.) Yegg sent food banks huge milk shipments they weren’t expecting and couldn’t use or store—like 2,500 extra gallons—resulting in waste, the very thing the program was supposed to solve for.
Yegg charged USDA exorbitant prices, and both companies did shady (or at least wildly sloppy) things with deliveries and invoices to get reimbursed. USDA paid CRE8AD8 more than $300,000 for deliveries that appeared to go to a for-profit company rather than a food bank. It paid Yegg for multiple milk deliveries that are unaccounted for and may not have happened at all and more than $2.85 million for boxes delivered to a real estate nonprofit operated by Yegg’s CEO’s wife (really). The nonprofit’s office space was rented by Yegg itself.
In the best twist of all, Yegg got paid $42,000 for one delivery it reported went to an organization that helps single moms, but when the Committee traced the delivery receipts, it found the boxes were actually sent to…wait for it…California Avocados Direct. Despite his canceled contract, Ben Holtz was still involved, somehow.
“This report provides the horrendous details: huge expenditures, high profits, failure to deliver as promised,” wrote Marion Nestle in a recent blog post. “The report has many recommendations for preventing such problems, but why bother? It would be much cheaper and less wasteful to raise SNAP benefits.”
She’s probably right, but we should also acknowledge the groups that used the Farmers to Families Food Box program as an opportunity to get more fresh, local fruits and vegetables into the hands of communities with little healthy food access.
GrowFood Carolina, a food hub that aggregates produce and dairy products from 120 small farms in South Carolina, distributed 4,000 boxes filled with fresh food from farmers in their network that lost all of their restaurant customers overnight. It was so successful, it raised its own money when the USDA funding ran out to continue the program. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit cooperative of Black farmers and landowners, delivered 4,000 fresh produce boxes to food insecure communities within the first three weeks of the program.
Common Market, a food hub that now has three locations in the Mid-Atlantic, Georgia, and Texas, primarily works with small to mid-size farms and sells to restaurants and schools. So, when those places shut down, their markets were devastated. Between March and August 2020, the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box program allowed them to send close to 6 million pounds of fresh produce and more than 800,000 pounds of dairy to low-income communities. When combined with other funding and programs the team used to deliver emergency food aid in boxes, they were able to provide a total of 9.4 million pounds of local food from 96 farms. That summer, I watched individuals in a low-income Baltimore neighborhood line up to receive the boxes, which were stuffed with crisp lettuce, green beans, apples, potatoes, and more.
In other words, to prepare for the future, it’s important to understand both went went (terribly) wrong, and what is possible.
Still hungry?
Is “better chicken” any good? For Civil Eats, I investigated the Better Chicken Commitment, a set of standards that many big fast food and grocery companies are now signing onto. The five-point plan seeks to improve animal welfare, but it’s unclear if the changes are meaningful or if corporations will honor their commitments.
25 years of edible education. On The Farm Report, I interviewed Angela McKee-Brown, executive director of the Edible Schoolyard Project (ESYP), about the organization’s 25-year anniversary. We talk about founder Alice Waters’ original vision and how ESYP is expanding its work year after year.
Actually eating
The weather just *turned* here in Baltimore over the last week or two and I’ve been reveling in fall food. We’ve already made an acorn squash salad, delicata squash and tofu, sweet potato-apple soup, and sweet potato-lentil curry. I also made my first apple crisp—my absolute favorite dessert—of the season. Apparently I’ve been so eager to eat all of this, I haven’t taken any pictures. Here’s a happy fall photo of Morris, instead.
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