The Farmers to Families program was designed and implemented as a temporary effort to respond to severe market disruption caused by a global pandemic, including the collapse of food service, largescale food loss and waste, and curtailed export markets in the early stages of the pandemic, Matt Herrick, USDA spokesman told the Free Press in an email.
But according to Herrick, program challenges included that distributing the food boxes wasn t based on need and prices ranged greatly, from $28 to $105 per box.
Other challenges the USDA listed that the program faced:
Data on which counties received food boxes wasn t captured and as many as 900 counties didn t receive food from the program.