The FarmLink Project: Collier Brothers Team Up to Fight Hunger

This article was originally printed in the Summer 2021 issue of Views from the Hill.

The Farmlink Project, a grassroots hunger relief movement founded in March 2020 by brothers Ben ’17 and Will ’16 Collier along with six college friends, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. The company continues to evolve as it seeks to implement systemic change in the fight against hunger.

In the spring of 2020, while the coronavirus raged across the country, the idea for Farmlink was born. As more and more restaurants shut their doors in the face of an escalating health crisis, and the local farmers who supplied them sat with warehouses overflowing with fresh food, Ben, Will, and their college friends found the opportunity they’d been looking for to help those most affected by the pandemic. They immediately set about finding ways to bring the unused produce to hungry families in need, in the process extending a helping hand to farmers who had lost most, if not all, of their revenue. Over the next several months, the team brought on board more college student volunteers, or “team members” as they are called, and began taking monetary donations, with 100% of the profits going toward paying the wages of farm workers and truckers to deliver the produce to food banks nationwide, even renting vans and trucks to deliver thousands of pounds of produce themselves. Farmlink’s efforts soon gained national attention when a New York Times article, published in May 2020, led to more coverage on multiple news outlets. “It’s not coincidental that Farmlink came about during the pandemic,” said Will. “The pandemic brought food insecurity and food waste to the nation’s attention.”

Over the course of its first year, Farmlink helped deliver more than 30 million pounds of food to food banks across the nation, raising roughly $6 million in monetary donations, and partnering with Uber Freight to facilitate delivery of goods, as well as Food Finders to help manage donations. 

One year in, Farmlink is a community of 150–200 team members, mostly college and university students with an average age of 21, as well as some recent graduates and high school–age students. They have obtained their 501c3 status, and beginning in July, three members of the core team began being paid full time, including Ben, who will serve as Chief Operating Officer.

Now, Farmlink has eyes on expanding its mission. The organization’s vision is twofold: First, to create an effective, efficient, and stable food delivery system that can operate long term, rather than only as a band-aid during a crisis. Second, to attempt to solve the systemic problems that contribute to food insecurity. In recent months, the group has expanded its initiative to include policy, tax and carbon credits, education, sustainability efforts, and all the micro-pieces that contribute to the macro problem. “If we’re able to connect hundreds of really motivated, smart college students with each other, and the resources and understanding of how systemic change could be made,” said Ben, “when they go off into the world, some may go into policy, some may go into agriculture, or the supply chain, or serving food insecurity. We hope they will always be thinking, how can what I’m doing make an impact to improve these problems that we want to see changed. This is how we really believe the work of Farmlink will lead to a long-term systemic impact.”

In that vein, Will recently graduated from Brown University and has since taken a position at Accenture, a corporation for social good. He is still closely tied to Farmlink and has connected Farmlink with opportunities through Accenture. Other Hopkins connections have also come in handy in the last year. Noah Slager ’19 joined the Farmlink team in September 2020 and is now working on the food placement team. Ben and Noah were members of the improv group Peaches together while they were Hopkins students. Josh Ip ’18, who is working at MainStreet, a startup helping other startups connect to tax credits and deductions, recently met up with Ben, who is working on a similar program for farmers. “Consulting with Josh was a great networking opportunity and sharing of ideas,” said Ben. At Hopkins, Will was on the water polo team with Josh. In December 2020, Ben and Will presented to the Hopkins Student Council (StuCo), sharing the mission of Farmlink and the importance of their work, during StuCo’s annual Connecticut Food Bank Fundraiser. Following the presentation, several StuCo members joined a Farmlink “power hour” research 
event that helped to rescue 2,000 pounds of food per hour.

To learn more about Farmlink, the impact they have made, or to get involved, visit their website: farmlink.org