SOCIAL MEDIA POST FROM SUNSET BERRY FARMS. A RESPONSE HAS BEEN REQUESTED FROM MOUNTAINEER FOOD BANK AND WILL POSTED IF RECEIVED.
Warning to other farmers! Please read to protect yourself!
Erica at Mountaineer Food Bank called us and requested to purchase as much food as we could grow for 3 years, citing a 3.3 million dollar LFPA grant award. MFB now indicates they feel they have no obligation to follow through with the huge order they placed with our farm. We feel compelled to share our story so other farms are aware of what can happen.
When Erica contacted me to place the order, I expressed concer regarding quantities they would be able to purchase and Erica assured me the need is massive and “NO FOOD WILL BE TURNED AWAY”.
Farmer Kent was excited to have this opportunity of a lifetime! Almost too good to be true but he seized the moment and immediately began preparing the farm for expansion!We hired a full time worker, several seasonal workers and spent probably $20,000 to make new fields and purchase supplies.
If MFB does not purchase the food they ordered, we will have no place to sell this large volume.
We have requested that Mountaineer Food Bank meet with all the farmers they contacted to grow food for this grant and do production planning so we all know what each farm is expected to supply. Mountaineer Food Bank isn’t willing to engage in production planning. It isn’t fair to expect farmers to operate like this.
We have been contacted by several other farmers who say MFB did the same thing to them.
We have been very transparent about challenges we face as a small farm. Like all farmers in WV, we have dealt with droughts, floods, freezes, deer destruction, and the list goes on. But all those things are expected. Who would think a FOOD BANK, of all places, would do this to farmers?
Placing huge orders and then not following through could put farmers out of business and weaken the food system of a state that is already struggling with poverty and is on the food desert list!
The photos were taken at the beginning of the program when everything was going quite well before all hell broke loose!
Farmer Kent renting an excavator to make new fields, workers with the beautiful berries they picked, Farmer Kent and Jennifer on the first delivery of strawberries to MFB that we were so excited about and a load of summer veggies on the way to God’s Way Home Inc. in Rainelle, WV, that was immensely appreciated by that community.
