In a field in Ashton, Idaho, potato farmer Doug Hess stood before two million pounds of potatoes with nowhere to go. His commercial contracts had evaporated almost overnight. The restaurants, schools, stadiums, and cruise ships that once relied on his harvest had gone dark. He wanted to donate the surplus, but the cost of shipping it to food banks was more than he could absorb. Across the country, scenes like this were playing out on farms of every size — acres of fresh fruit, mountains of vegetables, millions of gallons of milk, all destined for landfills.
Meanwhile, just a few hours away, families lined up in cars stretching for miles outside food banks, waiting for their next meal.
A Crisis of Connection, Not Supply
The pandemic didn't break America's food supply — it broke the system that moved food from where it was grown to where it was needed. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, farm losses alone could reach $1.32 billion. Nearly half of the food previously bound for the foodservice industry had no buyer. At the same time, an estimated 30% of U.S. households had lost income due to COVID-19, and food banks were buckling under record demand.
The food existed. The hunger existed. What was missing was the link between them.
A Grassroots Movement Born in a Pandemic
When colleges across the country closed their doors in the spring of 2020, a group of students refused to sit still. They saw the crisis unfolding on two fronts — farmers with nowhere to sell, families with nothing to eat — and decided to build the bridge themselves.
The Farmlink Project began with cold calls. Students dialed farm after farm, locating surpluses, then rented trucks or recruited willing drivers to haul the produce directly to food banks. What started as a scrappy operation run from kitchen tables and dorm rooms quickly became one of the most efficient pandemic-era relief efforts in the country.
By the time the J.W. Couch Foundation came alongside them, Farmlink had already delivered nearly two million pounds of food from farms in 12 states, providing 1.5 million meals across 24 states — and preventing an estimated 19 million pounds of carbon emissions in the process.
What the Grant Made Possible
Our 2020 COVID-19 Relief grant helped Farmlink keep its trucks rolling at the height of the crisis. Every dollar went directly to paying farmers for their produce, compensating truckers for their miles, and putting fresh food on the tables of families who needed it most. The model is elegant in its simplicity: support the people already in the supply chain, and the supply chain takes care of the rest.
"Just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do anything. We're going to do everything we can to get as much produce as possible to the food banks that need it most."James Kanoff, Co-Founder
What Makes Farmlink Uniquely Positioned
Farmlink's power comes from the very thing that made its founding possible: a generation of young people who refused to accept that a broken system was an unsolvable one. With more than 100 full-time student volunteers, the organization operates with the speed of a startup and the heart of a movement.
They are not weighed down by legacy infrastructure or bureaucratic inertia. They make the calls, find the surplus, book the trucks, and get the food where it needs to go — often within days.
Looking Forward
What began as an emergency response has become something far more enduring. Farmlink's long-term vision is to build a sustainable model that permanently links local farmers to local food banks across the United States and around the world. The pandemic exposed cracks in our food system that existed long before COVID-19 — and Farmlink is determined to keep mending them, one truckload at a time.
In a year defined by what was lost, Farmlink reminded us of what's possible when young people decide that doing something is always better than doing nothing.
