Farmers to Families Food Box Shipments

This past year, The Gospel Mission was honored to be the recipient of three Farmers to Families Food Box trucks. The Farmers to Families Food Box Program was designed to put American farmers and distributors back to work while addressing increased demand at food banks, community and faith-based organizations, and other nonprofits serving Americans in need as a result of COVID-19. Since its creation in May of 2020, this new USDA program has successfully delivered over 110 million boxes of fresh and nutritious food grown by American farmers to underserved families across the country. 

A pillar of helping the homeless and food-insecure in the Siouxland community, The Gospel Mission served as a distribution point for the community in October, November, and December, receiving roughly 1,000 boxes in each shipment.  

The boxes contained staple groceries items from local Midwest producers and included things such as milk, cheese, yogurt, potatoes, fruit, various proteins, and more. The boxes varied in weight from 25-33 pounds each. 

In order to best distribute each shipment, The Gospel Mission partnered with other local agencies including Sunnybrook Community Church, The Salvation Army, The Warming Shelter, Habitat for Humanity, Crittenton Center, Midstep Services, Dismas, and others to help distribute the food boxes directly to those most in need in Siouxland. Boxes were also given out from The Gospel Mission Food Pantry and two drive-through distributions at the Mission. 

“We were truly blessed an honored to distribute over 3,000 boxes of food to those in need through the Farmers to Families program,” said Executive Director Paul Mahaffie. “A huge part of our mission is ‘To Feed the Hungry’, so to get to do it on such a large scale that benefitted the community was an awesome responsibility”.