The federal program buying boxed food for distribution to families in need has moved into its second round of contracts this month, and for members who make or sell cheese, the details of what qualifies matter more than the headline dollar figure. The first round leaned heavily on cheddar and a narrow list of standard cuts. The second round widens the eligible list to a longer roster of hard, semi-firm, and semi-soft styles — Gouda, Gruyère, Provolone, Romano, and several others alongside the cheddar that dominated the first pass.
That widening matters to us directly, because it's the difference between a purchasing program that only helps large-format cheddar producers and one that can actually move product for a farmstead operation making something else. We've been in touch with a few members who supply distribution partners under these contracts, and the consistent feedback is that the expanded list is a meaningful improvement, even if the paperwork to get listed as an eligible product is still more involved than it should be for a small operation with no dedicated compliance staff.
Members have also asked us how the contracts actually reach a small producer, since the purchasing itself runs through large distribution partners rather than direct federal-to-creamery agreements. In practice, that means a farmstead operation's path into the program almost always runs through an existing distributor relationship — another reason we've been pointing members toward distributors already holding a contract rather than trying to apply as an individual producer, which the program isn't really built to handle at that scale.
What we're asking for
Our position, which we've put in writing to the program's contracting office, is straightforward: keep the eligible-cheese list broad in any future rounds, and simplify the documentation a smaller producer needs to submit to get a specialty style approved. A large distributor can absorb the paperwork burden of getting a product added to an approved list. A two-person creamery generally can't, which means the program's benefits skew toward members who already have the administrative capacity to chase them — not necessarily the members who need the sales most.
A member running a mid-sized farmstead operation told us on a recent call that she'd looked at applying in the first round and given up after the second form asked for documentation her operation simply doesn't generate at that scale. "I make good cheese. I don't have a compliance department," is roughly how she put it. That's the gap our advocacy is aimed at closing — not the purchasing itself, which we think is a reasonable use of the program, but the on-ramp for smaller producers to actually participate in it.
We've also asked the contracting office to publish a clearer, plainer-language summary of what documentation is actually required for a specialty cheese style, rather than leaving members to interpret a form written for a much larger supplier. Two members who did get listed told us the biggest time cost wasn't the paperwork itself but figuring out which of it applied to their size of operation in the first place.
If you want to be heard on this
If your operation has tried to get listed as an eligible supplier under this program and hit a wall, we want to hear the specifics — what form, what documentation, where it stalled. Specific examples carry more weight than general frustration when we're making the case to a contracting office, and we'd rather bring them three concrete stories than one general complaint. Reach the Membership & Outreach Committee with details, and we'll fold them into the next round of comments.
In the meantime, if your product could plausibly qualify under the expanded list and you haven't looked into it, it may be worth a call to a distributor already working under one of these contracts before assuming the paperwork isn't worth the sales.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.