Food box program opens challenges

DANVILLE, Ill. — The Farmers to Families Food Box Program was designed and implemented to bring relief to families impacted by COVID-19, to farmers struggling to sell their crops, and to food distributors impacted by the shutdown of restaurants and other food-service demand due to the pandemic.

The program did do all those things — but along with the relief it brought, there also were challenges to getting so much food gathered and distributed. So far, the program has distributed over 132 million boxes of food nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It was a great program for a period of time when everybody really needed a shot in the arm,” said John Rollins, the owner and president of Central Illinois Produce.

The company has warehouse facilities in Danville, Morton and Urbana. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it had 100 employees and delivered to food-service venues, including restaurants, hospitals and schools, on delivery routes that ran seven days a week.

Rollins talked about the Farmers to Families Food Box Program and his company’s participation in it during the 2021 Illinois Specialty Crops Conference, conducted virtually this year.

When the company received one of the first awards after the program was kicked off in the late spring, the task seemed enormous, even for a company experienced in food distribution.

“We were given an award and we were challenged with the idea of creating — for us it was 150,000 boxes of produce and dairy a month, that we would distribute to 501c3s, food banks and such, in central and southern Illinois,” Rollins said.

Finding local suppliers who could provide the amounts of produce needed on a consistent basis. Rollins appointed one of his managers to lead the food box assembly effort and the company’s Danville warehouse was made into the assembly and storage point.

“When you’re talking about 150,000 boxes of produce over the course of the month, you’re talking 30,000 boxes a week that need to be created. So, when you are going to an apple grower and saying do you have extra three-pound bags of apples, you’re talking 30,000 three-pound bags of apples. It’s a lot of volume and a lot of growers can’t handle that,” he said.

Rollins ended up partnering with several Illinois growers, including Eckert Farms in Grafton and Rendleman Orchards in Alto Pass. He also found growers in neighboring states, including a farmer in Indiana, who supplied cantaloupe.

“We were pretty fortunate to use a number of different people,” Rollins said.

For the dairy boxes, Rollins worked with Prairie Farms Dairy in Carlinville, Ropp Jersey Cheese in Normal and Kilgus Dairy in Fairbury. Rollins said the farmers who were involved with the program stepped up to provide product.

“Ken Ropp and his team were really, really great to work with, the ability for them to ramp up to try to supply us with what we were needing was pretty amazing,” Rollins said.

Farmers like the Kilgus family of Kilgus Dairy contributed in an interesting way.

“Kilgus was providing the milk for YoBul Yogurt and we were putting the yogurt in our boxes so, indirectly, the yogurt came from Kilgus Dairy. Kilgus supplied the milk, YoBul made the yogurt and then Kilgus would deliver it to us and we would put it in the boxes,” Rollins said.

But the program wasn’t without challenges, particularly in the later stages of the program in 2020. Rollins said Central Illinois Produce has received multiple awards to put the food boxes together, starting in the spring and then continuing almost through the end of 2020.

When the program switched from having award holders assemble product-specific boxes — like dairy boxes, meat boxes and produce boxes, to one box containing all of those products — that made things difficult for smaller distributors.

“We weren’t selling or purchasing any meat products. What we saw was a lot of big awards in September for large distributors, like Sysco, who got a huge award,” Rollins said.

He said when some of those award holders struggled to source product and assemble boxes, his company helped out.

“They asked us to help continue to make boxes, because they were struggling with this thing,” Rollins said.

Changes to the program have made it difficult to stay as focused on local sources for product as award holders were at the beginning.

“The last round, which started in November-December, pricing got super competitive and it’s getting to the point now where it’s tough to keep the little guy in play, the small farmers in play, because they have a certain need, what they need to get for their product, and it’s turning into a really commodity-driven program, very low margins and not much emphasis on local. So, in that respect, it’s been very disappointing, from our perspective,” Rollins said.

On Jan. 4, Sonny Perdue, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and Ivanka Trump, assistant to President Donald Trump, announced the program will purchase an additional $1.5 billion worth of food to continue the program.

Rollins said he would see what the program looks like and hopes to participate again if possible.

“We are going to see where it goes and how it’s going to look and we’re going to see whether we can be a part of that going forward,” he said.

Rollins emphasized that despite the challenges of the program, everyone involved adjusted to make it work.

“You sort of just dive into things and make things work sometimes and I saw that time and again, with the suppliers we had, with hiring temp workers and working long hours and I think it was worth it for everybody,” he said.