In a year marked by a global pandemic, FRESHFARM confronted our fair share of challenges. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the Washington, DC metro area in March, we responded quickly, shifting our operations dramatically and establishing creative ways to continue to serve our communities. FRESHFARM remained resilient as we worked to keep our farmers markets open, increase food access for vulnerable families and seniors, and pivot to virtual food education for students.

In the midst of a national reckoning on racial justice, we took a hard look at our personal and organizational biases, and pushed forward to address these challenges to promote a just and equitable food system. We dove deep into the important work of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and committed to making sustained, intentional changes to become an anti-racist organization.

Despite the challenges of 2020, it was a year of new pathways and new successes for FRESHFARM. After merging with Community Foodworks at the end of 2019, we made strides in integrating our staff, finances, policies, and cultures, and found exciting new opportunities for collaboration and innovation among our programs. We deepened partnerships with organizations across the region to help expand our impact and reach.

We are grateful that we have been able to continue to serve our communities and help sustain the local food system during 2020 — and for all the partners, customers, and families who supported us along the way.

Hugo Mogollon
Executive Director

Cultivating inclusive, welcoming community spaces to access and enjoy local food, improve health, and support local farmers and food producers

The 2020 season brought unprecedented growth and challenges to our farmers markets. Our merger with Community Foodworks doubled the number of farmers markets FRESHFARM manages, making us the third largest farmers market organization in the country and the largest in the region. Just as we were preparing to launch the biggest market season in our history, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Our markets team immediately sprang into action, working tirelessly to keep markets open through ever-changing rules and safety guidelines. We immediately implemented safety measures at market — including handwashing stations, one-way traffic flow, and timed entries and capacity limits — which changed every week as the pandemic unfolded. We worked closely with local and state governments in DC, Maryland, and Virginia to ensure that farmers markets could remain open as essential businesses, serving a critical lifeline for both farmers and customers.

Demand for fresh food skyrocketed in the early weeks and months of the pandemic. FRESHFARM markets, as well as our farmers and producers, pivoted quickly to respond to the needs of the community. Customers turned to local farmers markets as a relatively safe, outdoor venue for purchasing fresh, nutritious food. Farmers and producers relied on the market to keep their businesses afloat as wholesale orders and restaurant accounts dried up.

To increase purchasing power for shoppers using nutrition benefits at market, we eliminated the $10 cap on our Fresh Match program, offering unlimited dollar-for-dollar matches to anyone shopping at the market with SNAP, WIC, Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program benefits, or other benefit programs. The farmers markets have truly proven to be resilient and essential in keeping our community fed, and our farmers and producers in business, during this unprecedented time.

Linking farmers and communities to increase access to fresh, local produce through an innovative model of food distribution

The Pop Up Food Hub launched its 2020 season in March, just as the pandemic was arriving in our region. COVID-19 quickly brought many elements of the industrial food system to a grinding halt, with people across the country facing empty grocery shelves and farmers dumping food that could no longer be sold to restaurant and wholesale distributors. The stark contrast of food being wasted while millions went hungry revealed how brittle our national food supply chain is. In the midst of this crisis, the Pop Up Food Hub’s regionally based food distribution model helped fill critical gaps in our local food supply while providing additional revenue for farmers at a time when they needed it most.

Every week, the Pop Up Food Hub team picks up wholesale orders from farmers attending FRESHFARM farmers markets and distributes these orders to institutional partners, childcare facilities, senior care organizations, and rec centers who we work with throughout the year to distribute fresh food to their clients. With the pandemic limiting recipients’ ability to leave home to pick up their groceries, we implemented home delivery options, bringing bags of fresh produce to hundreds of seniors and families with children each week. We established new partnerships in Northern Virginia with medical centers and school PTAs to serve a wider swath of the community.

In 2020, our operations scaled up an incredible 600% to meet the needs of families and individuals across the DC metro area, bringing more sales to local farmers who fulfill our wholesale orders and more fresh food to families struggling to buy groceries. In this difficult year, the Pop Up Food Hub was an inspiring example of a nimble and resilient regionally based food system, rooted in the community it serves.

Connecting students to nutritious food with joyful, academically enriching cooking and gardening experiences

FoodPrints began 2020 engaging students in the full scope of our program. This included monthly two-hour immersive in-school field trips based in the FoodPrints Curriculum and an innovative partnership with the school meals program, which linked what students were learning in our classrooms and gardens to what they were served in their cafeterias.

In March 2020, when COVID-19 closed schools and students started learning from home, FoodPrints staff quickly pivoted to online learning. Through live classes, our staff engaged students in lessons based on our curriculum with creative adaptations for virtual learning that reinforced academic learning, fostered independence, and brought joy to learning, just as we do while we are together in the classroom. We also created FoodPrints Anywhere, with videos, guides, and activities for families to use at home together.

During our 7-week Intensive Summer Program for 30 DCPS students from Wards 7 and 8, students received weekly home deliveries of supplies for cooking, gardening, reading, and studying plants. Students logged in daily for morning meetings, book clubs focusing on literacy through farming and food, cooking classes, and garden science investigations. Students also had weekly visits by the authors and illustrators of the books they received and read. Weekly home delivery of food – coordinated by the FRESHFARM Pop Up Food Hub – provided students access to the ingredients they needed to cook each week.

For the 2020-21 school year, FoodPrints uses a flexible programming model with our school partners, including: virtual cooking and science classes, family cooking nights with food access to support equitable participation, and outdoor garden clubs and classes that offer small-group, hands-on learning in school gardens. We are honored to partner with schools to give students exciting, meaningful opportunities for hands-on, joyful learning during a difficult year of isolation.

In 2020, FRESHFARM joined the Center for Nonprofit Advancement as the first client in their new Center for Race, Equity, Justice and Inclusion. The Center is committed to modeling and ensuring racial equity across sectors, and has worked with FRESHFARM to develop, implement, and sustain a racial equity work plan to guide real change within the organization.

As the first step of this partnership, the Center conducted a comprehensive organizational scan where they gathered information from farmers, vendors, staff, shareholders, customers, and community partners to understand the current landscape of racial equity and inclusion in our work. We are using the findings from our partnership with the Center as a baseline for our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, and to inform a plan of  action across all areas of our organization to make our work more equitable.

In 2020, the FRESHFARM staff and board of directors participated in a series of anti-racist trainings to examine our personal and organizational areas of growth and bring a stronger equity lens to our work. The board modified their bylaws to mandate a set number of BIPOC members to serve on the board. Plans for 2021 include revising our hiring and vendor selection process to account for bias and increase equity and transparency.

We know there is much work left to do. As we seek to build an equitable and just food system, we are also committed to building an equitable and just organization in everything we do. We are grateful for your support as we continue our efforts to cultivate a local food system that is fair, transparent, sustainable, accessible, and nurturing for everyone in our community.

FRESHFARM secured diverse revenue streams in 2020 to support our COVID response and operations: 71% of our revenue came from public support in the form of grants and donations, which we paired with support from private foundations and entities as well as individual donations. We kept our administrative costs low: 85% of our funds went directly to our core programs promoting sustainable agriculture and improving food access, education, and equity in the Mid-Atlantic region.

In 2020, FRESHFARM saw a substantial increase in generosity from individual and private funders in support of our COVID-19 emergency response. We retained 85% of grant awards and exponentially increased the number of new individual donors. Working with a diverse network of corporate, government, and private funders, we maintained and grew our programs in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. We are immensely grateful to all our funders, partners, and other supporters for helping us create a vibrant, resilient, and equitable food system.

FRESHFARM believes that food transforms communities. As a regional and national leader on local food, we’re pushing forward innovative solutions to create a thriving and sustainable food system. Our integrated approach to addressing food production, distribution, and education makes an impact in communities across our region. We invite you to join us in this work in 2021 and beyond! Here are some ways to connect with FRESHFARM: