Community Spotlight: Lindsay Willemain and the Essex Food Hub

How long have you been serving as ED of the Essex Food  Hub? What  aspects of this role are you personally most passionate about?

 I've served as ED of Essex Food Hub since its founding in 2022. I was drawn to the Hub—and the Adirondacks more than a decade ago- by food and the farmers in this area. I am passionate about the tangible ways Essex Food Hub connects people with a sense of belonging and care through the food that our farmers thoughtfully grow and the delicious products that food entrepreneurs create from the harvest. I love the financial and logistical puzzles we solve daily to link growers and eaters. And there’s nothing like the smell of a cooler full of apples—it breeds contentment that grows as we send them off to new homes.

What is the overall mission of the EFH? 

Essex Food Hub provides holistic support to fractured food systems—at the nexus of economic revitalization, farmer viability, and the accessibility of healthy, local food for all. Presently, we purchase and aggregate food from a number of small farms and deliver it to low-income households facing transportation barriers, schools and healthcare institutions, small healthy food retailers, and food pantries through our 1,200-mile weekly distribution schedule that includes the Adirondacks, the Capital Region, and as far south as New York City. In the coming months, we will break ground on renovations and construction that will reestablish our commercial kitchen and local foods processing. 

EFH has been providing high quality nourishment to schools and underserved community members for quite a while now. How are you responding to the current changing landscape of slashed  government food assistance? 

These food assistance cuts are coming as we and our farm, food hub, and pantry partners are grappling with the USDA’s elimination of programs that fund local food purchasing for food banks, schools, and other community organizations addressing food insecurity. The cuts will not only impact those who receive benefits, but the farms and small businesses that accep them as well.With nearly 3,000 individuals in Essex County alone receiving nutritional assistance, there’s a lot of work to do, and we are jumping in alongside many organizations, small businesses, and individuals in our region. We're communicating with the nine pantries we have historically served to determine how we can help meet their evolving needs.  Thanks to a private donor’s $10,000 contribution to the effort, we’ve purchased local eggs, dairy, meat, and produce that we will deliver to the pantries next week. We are allied with fellow food system leaders in Essex County’s Well-Fed Collaborative and the Adirondack Food System Network to ensure strategic coordination and operation with the most up-to-date information.  

Are you seeing first-hand the consequences of this change? Any stories to share? Are schools or individuals reaching out to you?

We are receiving requests from individuals who are understandably concerned about how they and their families will be able to feed themselves without sacrificing other basic needs. One individual recalled the full-diet farm boxes Essex Food Hub provided to Head Start and WIC families throughout 2024 and contacted us to inquire if this might be a resource for his daughter who receives SNAP. With the loss of USDA food purchasing funds, we’re relying on donor and other private funds to serve our communities. 

Many folks know us best through our retail market, which is just one facet of our work.  There is much behind-the-scenes action! The market’s offerings are available as a result of our extensive distribution support for small farmers. This includes gathering products at many farms and expanding the farms’ distribution to retailers, food hubs, and schools through our complex logistical networks and transportation to those outlets.

We fundraise for this capacity because resources for such distribution are beyond the means of the small- to medium-sized farms we represent in an area where about half of the population faces a living-wage gap.  We also secure financial support for projects like The Family Table: Food, Tools, & Knowledge, a collaboration with Essex County and soon Warren County WIC. In addition to food, we provide meal kits, kitchen tools (including high-value appliances), recipes, and educational opportunities to meet short, medium, and long-term nutritional needs.