Efforts underway to get food from farms to needy

As food banks have struggled to meet soaring demand from people suddenly out of work because of the coronavirus outbreak, it has been especially troubling to see farmers have to bury produce, dump milk and euthanize hogs.

Now some states are providing more money to help pay for food that might otherwise go to waste, the U.S. Agriculture Department is spending $3 billion to help get farm products to food banks, and a senator is seeking $8 billion more to buy farm produce for food banks.

Farmers were left with little choice after the closure of restaurants and schools abruptly ended much of the demand for the food they produced.

Thousands of acres of Florida fruits and vegetables and California's leafy greens have been plowed over or left to rot.

Meanwhile, dairy farmers in Vermont, Florida, New York and Wisconsin have had to dump millions of gallons of milk. Hog farmers were hit by a drop in demand and the temporary closure of some slaughterhouses, forcing them to euthanize pigs that couldn't be processed into bacon and pork chops.

This has coincided with a spike in demand at food banks, with nearly 39 million people suddenly out of work.

New York state created a $25 million program this spring so that food banks can purchase locally made agricultural products.

Chris Noble, who has a dairy farm about 30 miles south of Rochester, said the Nourish New York program gave him an outlet for some of the milk his coop was dumping and provided money to cover his costs. He worked with other farmers in western New York to send dairy products to a food bank in New York City.

In Iowa, state officials and the Iowa Pork Producers Association have raised more than $130,000 to help pay for the processing of pigs to supply meat for food banks.

In Wisconsin, Richard Wise, is the CEO of Valley Bakers Cooperative,  a food distribution cooperative in northeast Wisconsin. He said they had to lay off some of his 190 employees as demanded decreased due to the virus. But they won a bid to put together the boxes for food banks and brought back the employees and hired 22 more.

"You know, they all realize that they're helping the communities as well," he said. So it's really a positive experience for our company."