DFA employees pose for a photo at a Destiny USA dairy drive through event on April 22nd, 2020, in which DFA Cares gave away fluid milk to the community.
The last few months have been a complete upset for many families across the US, leaving them without a job, dwindling savings, and hard pressed to put food on the table as community resources become stretched. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, over 30 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits, many having to wait weeks to hear back from backlogged caseworkers. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) has worked to fill that need through their DFA Cares fund. The nationwide co-operative represents 13,000 farms across the country, with 3200 members in the Northeast alone.
“DFA Cares is a non-profit that DFA has created, and it offers the opportunity for scholarships for students in agricultural careers, and support for members that are experiencing extreme hardship due to weather, crop failure, etc.,” said Jennifer Houston, the senior director of marketing and council affairs for DFA in the Northeast. “In light of everything that is going, on we created an offset branch called Farmers Feeding Families Fund (FFFF). With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the widespread closures of businesses such as restaurants, schools, hotels, etc., there has been a decrease in demand for dairy products. In many cases there is no home for the milk that we were marketing, and our farmers have been forced into the position of disposing of milk. That’s a last resort, no one wants to dispose of milk. And often when that moment has been reached, we have dairy farmers coming to us, as well as people in the community asking if there’s a way to get it in to the hands of those that need it most. So in quick fashion we made the decision at DFA to start making donations to food banks and communities to get it into the hands of those that need it. Outside of FFFF, DFA has donated over 150,000 gallons of milk. We created FFFF because we also had folks that were willing to donate money so that food banks could purchase the products and get dairy products into the food banks across the country through normal channels as well.
DFA took the initiative one step farther by partnering with Feeding America, a nationwide network of over 200 food banks providing food to approximately 46 million people. “Our members are able to go in, select their local food bank or where they’d like to see a donation of dairy products go to,” said Houston. “The food bank can then purchase dairy products through a normal mechanism or purchase a retailer. The farmer/processor then gets paid for their product through the normal supply chain. As a dairy co-operative that is owned by family farmers, we’re dedicated to providing nutrious dairy foods to families across the board.”
For those interested in learning more about the program, please visit www.dfamilk.com/dfacares