Groups of people huddle beneath trees at picnic tables near the farmers market in Seaside on Thursday afternoon, April 2. It is a blustery bluebird day, the chilly wind keeping people bundled. Alex Hernandez, a market program manager with Everyone’s Harvest – a nonprofit dedicated to improving access to healthy, local produce and host of the farmers market – hops atop a picnic table beside a stack of 90 boxes filled with produce.
“Today is our last day of produce boxes,” he bellows to the waiting crowd.
Within 30 minutes, the boxes have disappeared.
Every week for the past two-and-a-half years, Everyone’s Harvest has offered free produce boxes to low-income residents as part of the Farms Together initiative, a California program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchase Assistance cooperative agreement program.
The USDA terminated the grant in spring 2026. The funding, originally intended to last two more years, had been effectively cut off, according to Everyone’s Harvest Executive Director Hester Parker. The grant had been awarded to the California Association of Food Banks to connect food aggregators with smaller-scale farmers who lack access to larger buyers.
“Now we’re asking the State Legislature to put it in the budget to offset the lack of federal funding to keep it going,” Parker says, “because it’s been so successful.”
Everyone’s Harvest distributed these boxes weekly at its Seaside and Alisal markets. At the height of the program, about 380 boxes valued at about $26 a box were given out per week. Everyone’s Harvest received $890,000 in grant funds over two years, which the nonprofit used to buy produce from vendors; residents with proof of eligibility (like a Medi-Cal or EBT card) then collected the boxes for free.
“I’m not working right now, so these boxes have helped a lot,” says Alma Vasquez at the Seaside market. She stands with about 10 other women who say the produce has helped supplement their groceries. After the program ends, they add they’ll continue to come to this market to support their neighbors, many of whom are local farmers.
The program had also been a boon to farmers: around $653,000 worth of produce was purchased from growers (primarily in the tri-county area) and passed on to low-income households. Many farmers made investments expecting the program to continue.
For Lupita Quintero, a first-generation farmer with a 5.5-acre organic farm in San Benito County, the Farms Together program helped her hire a full-time employee from Prunedale, bringing her workforce from two (herself and her husband) to three.
“I needed help with the flowers and harvesting peas. After starting the program, this money [enabled] me to buy necessary equipment and hire an extra worker,” she says.
The program also allows her to sell her produce at a better price because it gives her an incentive to show up at the market, with a guaranteed buyer thanks to the LFPA funding. A broker would pay her $7 for about 24 bundles of celery, she says, whereas at the market she can sell each bundle for $2.50.
“The program buys at the right price,” she says, “and it also keeps farming doing good by the people.”