SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The Farmlink Project is a student-run organization committed to solving food insecurity.
The movement came to life as five college students found themselves at home from school at the start of the pandemic.
A Los Angeles native, and then senior at Brown University, Aidan Reilly remembers April of 2020.
“Basically, we'd been sent home from school, we had nothing to do besides sit at our computers and find out the next piece of bad news,” Reilly said. “Two of the most shocking things we were seeing was farmers having to throw out their produce and their perishables. Then also, I saw food banks … that I grew up volunteering at who were running out of food.”
Back in Connecticut, Reilly’s friend, and soon to be fellow partner in philanthropy, Ben Collier, was reading the same news.
“My mom kept sending us articles about these long food bank lines and these major piles of food at farms,” Collier said. “And from my mom, she just said, do something about it, try and figure it out.”
It began on a zoom call between Reilly, Collier and three of their fellow founders. They saw food waste and food insecurity, and they knew these problems could help solve one another.
“We said, we don't know anything about farming or trucking, or food banking, really. But we can probably figure out how to get one truck to one foodbank," Reilly recalls.
They started calling local farms.
“At the beginning, we were renting U-Hauls and driving to the farm, loading in the back and then back on the 405 freeway to food banks like West Side Food Bank, which was definitely fun. Maybe it was illegal,” Reilly said.
What began as a couple of college kids driving U-Hauls full of food to communities in need has grown into a full scale food rescue operation completely student driven. Now, they have their 501(c)(3) status, Farmlink works with third party professional drivers and their efforts are nationwide-mobilized by 100 student volunteers in 48 states.
“But we also want to impact policy and affect how people view the entire charitable food space,” Collier said. “In general, we want to improve the capacity for people to feed themselves and their families with dignity, with choice and with respect.”
It’s been 20 months since the very first food delivery in Santa Monica, and the Farmlink Project has now moved 50 million pounds of produce from farm to foodbank.
“We look at how this thing has grown over the last year and a half. It gives me hope for the future and the way that you actually can change the systems that you might have grown up thinking were unchangeable or … you couldn't put a dent in them,” Reilly said.
Reilly, Collier and their fellow Farmlink executives have since put aside plans to pursue the careers they thought they wanted.
“I mean, there was no question if you go down to your local food bank … you can see the lines developing outside of that. And if you have a way to fix it, it became really difficult to justify going working at our banking jobs or entertainment, jobs or consulting,” Reilly said.
“This has been a proof of concept that if you can gather together enough like-minded people who are motivated you can make a significant impact,” Reilly added.
For more information on how you can support the Farmlink Project or get involved visit https://www.farmlinkproject.org.