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GAO-20-711R 1 (2020-09-16)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaebrt0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 September 16, 2020 Congressional Committees Agriculture Spending: Opportunities Exist for USDA to Identify Successes and Challenges of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program to Inform Future Efforts Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused disruptions in the U.S. food supply chain, from the farms where raw agricultural commodities are produced to the food processing and distribution network that enables these commodities to be used by consumers. The closure of institutions (e.g., schools, restaurants, and hotels) made it difficult for agricultural producers to market their commodities, leading to the spoilage of crops, dumping of milk, and euthanization of livestock. As part of its response to the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) developed the Farmers to Families Food Box Program. Through this program, USDA plans to purchase up to $3 billion in fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and meat products; contract with distributors to package these products into family-sized boxes; and transport these boxes to food banks, community and faith-based organizations, and other nonprofits that will then provide the food boxes to persons in need. The program is implemented through USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service and involves about 200 contractors. We reviewed the Farmers to Families Food Box Program in response to a provision in the CARES Act for GAO to conduct monitoring and oversight of the use of funds made available to prepare for, respond to, and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, our objective was to review the key actions USDA has taken, to date, to respond to and recover from COVID- 19. We last reported on the Farmers to Families Food Box Program in June 2020 as part of GAO's mandated 90-day report to Congress.1 We conducted this work as part of GAO's mandated 60-day report to Congress. We reviewed the most recent USDA Farmers to Families Food Box Program delivery data on its website as of August 27, 2020; federal laws, agency policy and other guidance, and expenditure data provided to us by USDA as of August 14, 2020; and written responses to our questions by USDA officials in the Agricultural Marketing Service. We determined that the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box Program delivery data and obligations and expenditures data were sufficiently reliable for the purpose of describing delivery and spending information. We examined USDA's implementation of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, including the collection and evaluation of information and assessing USDA's approach against relevant guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Federal Standards for Internal Control.2 GAO continues its work on various 1GAO, COVID-19: Opportunities to Improve Federal Response and Recovery Efforts, GAO-20-625 (Washington, D.C.: June 25, 2020). 2Office of Management and Budget, Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluations, OMB Memorandum M-1 0-01 (Washington, D.C.: 2009); Office of Management and Budget, Evaluating Programs for Efficacy and Cost-Efficiency, OMB Memorandum M-10-32 (Washington, D.C.: 2010); and GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO1 4-704G (Washington, D.C.: September 2014). Specifically, the monitoring control activities component of the Federal Standards for Internal Control-that management should establish and operate monitoring activities to monitor the internal control system and evaluate results-was significant to this objective. GAO-20-71 1 R Agriculture Spending Page 1

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