So many systems have broken in the national pandemic-shutdown—one of them is farmers having trouble getting their crops to market, while people go hungry. Another is students with way too much time on their hands, their classes being virtual.
Aidan Reilly, a student at Brown University, and James Kanoff, a Stanford student, had an idea for getting those farm crops to those people who need food.
They recruited Emmett Reilly (Aidan’s twin brother), Will Collier, Max Goldman, Jordan Hartzell, and Ben Collier (Will’s twin!), all from Brown University as the first volunteers of the FarmLink Project, a nonprofit that buys surplus produce from farms and drives trucks from the farms to food banks all over the country.
The farmers get paid and the hungry eat.
In just a few months, the team expanded to over 100 students from not only Brown and Stanford, but also Cornell, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Southern California, and Babson College.
FarmLink’s first delivery was 10,800 eggs delivered to a food bank in Santa Monica; Aidan drove the truck (after renting it and learning how to drive it). The next delivery was 50,000 pounds of onions from Oregon.
But then the real work began: figuring out food transportation laws, setting up a nonprofit organization, establishing a media presence, soliciting donations. But it all seemed to work.
Will: “The most amazing thing has been the amount of support and outreach and donations that we’ve gotten so far. We’ve heard from students and people all over the country who want to get involved, want to offer us trucks if we have a shipment in their area. It’s been an incredible journey so far.”
They arranged themselves into teams: one group doing the administrative and resource development work, and the other doing the “grunt work”, such as unloading potatoes from trucks. “It’s hard work,” acknowledges Aidan, “but if we were sitting in our houses in sweatpants while somebody else was digging through these potatoes, it wouldn’t feel right. It’s important that we get involved directly.”
As of July 15 FarmLink had delivered over five million pounds of food—potatoes, onions, zucchini, celery, carrots, milk, eggs, and salt. It also managed to pay thousands of dollars in wages to farm workers and truck drivers (when they can’t drive themselves). And it continues to grow—in deliveries, volunteers, and donations.
The founders of FarmLink intend to keep the movement going. “It’s definitely a priority for us,” says Aidan, “to leave behind something that continues to be productive.”
And the reason that it’s a priority is obvious to anyone who is familiar with food shortages, especially in the days of coronavirus. Volunteer Max summed it up: “This problem is not going away anytime soon. There is so much to be done.”