Through a new federally-funded program called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, the SLO Food Bank, in partnership with Harvestly, is able to connect with local farmers for fresh produce.
“This program allows us to source locally from farmers right in our backyard throughout SLO County, particularly super small farmers, and to make sure that they are getting paid a fair market value for the produce that they're helping provide to our neighbors," SLO Food Bank CEO Molly Kern said.
Harvestly connected all of its SLO County suppliers to the food bank for this program.
“She [said], if you have the products, they would love to buy it," Fallon Molnar of Molnar Cattle LLC said.
Harvestly offered up the avocados from Molnar Cattle's farm, which the owner says sell pretty well on their website.
“They just pay me retail price and they're super generous about that," Molnar said. "They said we're here to support you and we want to support our local agriculture because that's kind of who makes this whole world go around here in San Luis Obispo County.”
From federal funds through the Build Back Better Act to the SLO Food Bank, local farmers receive retail price for their goods and their goods are then delivered to more than 39,000 people in need in the community.
“In the past year, the need for food bank services has grown 16 percent year over year, so it's a huge increase," Kern said. "It follows the previous year's increase of more than 12 percent, so we continue being able to rise to the occasion to serve more and more people every month thanks to the support of our amazing community, but also through programs like this that are authorized at the federal level."
The program may soon expand beyond just fresh fruits and vegetables.
“We have a grass-fed beef business as well," Molnar said. "That's actually our main business. [In] the future they're hopefully going to branch into proteins for the SLO Food Bank with this whole grant deal. But for now, they're just kind of sticking to fruits and vegetables which is great. We have plenty of avocados to go around."
