The Farm to Food Bank program will now be permanent in Illinois! While it first started out as a pilot program to help farmers, food banks and people who are food insecure, legislation was recently signed into law to expand access to fresh, local food for those in need.
Under this program, a process is created to acquire and distribute fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, dairy and eggs to organizations that provide free food for those who need it. The food must come from Illinois producers.
In two years of the pilot program, almost 2.5 million pounds of food were donated. The legislation was initially passed unanimously out of the Illinois House before being signed this week by the Governor.