Future of the USDA’s Food Box Program

What is the current state of USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program

"1.5 million boxes have already been delivered and those suppliers are taking that food in family-sized boxes to distribute across the country," said Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue. "Food banks, community-based organizations and other non-profits that serve American families."

Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator, Bruce Summers, said this is a challenging effort for AMS, but filled with reward.

"For culture marking service as this is really a brand new way of doing business. We typically tractor trailer loads of food that goes to distribution centers for things like school lunch and other federal feeding nutrition programs, so this box program is really innovative."

Summers added that there has been a great deal of interest in the program from recipients as well as stakeholders throughout the food sector.

"We’re just getting started on this and so at this point we’re at a million boxes delivered but we’re shooting for somewhere around 40 million boxes."

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