Employment effects of the Farmers to Families Food Box program on small businesses

Federal food distribution programs aim to address food insecurity while supporting farms and food businesses. Many of these programs include small business set-asides designed to improve outcomes for participating firms, yet little evidence exists quantifying their impact on small business performance. We study the Farmers to Families Food Box (FFFB) program, a temporary initiative operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from May 2020 to May 2021 that contracted vendors to assemble and deliver food boxes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using vendor shipment records linked to firm-level employment data from the National Establishment Time Series, we evaluate whether participation in the program affected employment levels of participating small businesses. We estimate a Dynamic Two-Way Fixed Effect Difference-in-Difference model with matched treatment and comparison groups to test for effects on 2020 and 2021 employment levels while accounting for contemporaneous effects of the Payment Protection Program (PPP). Results show that FFFB participation was associated with higher employment among small businesses, with particularly robust evidence for positive effects in 2021. These findings provide some of the first quantitative evidence linking participation in federal food procurement programs to improved small business employment outcomes.