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    Local food for schools helps farmers and kids. So why is Trump cutting funding?

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    “If you happened to smell hickory smoke in the city this week, we were probably to blame,” the North Little Rock school district’s child nutrition program shared in a 30 January Facebook post featuring a picture of the day’s lunch.The locally sourced menu included school-smoked chopped beef, pulled pork, fresh apples and coleslaw. This isn’t standard cafeteria fare, but funds from the US government helped kids in this Arkansas town get fresh, nourishing foods produced by farmers and ranchers in their own community.Menus like this might be a thing of the past come next school year. On 7 March, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) notified states of the withdrawal of $1bn in taxpayer dollars that states used to contract with local producers, effectively ending these and other innovative programs. School districts like that of North Little Rock were counting on these funds to plan menus for the next school year. Now, with just five months to go, the funding has been abruptly rescinded.As someone who has spent my entire career working in school food and now serves as the senior director of programs and policy for the National Farm to School Network, I know the best way to ensure that American children receive a nourishing school lunch every day is to expand federal support for community-based food producers.I know first-hand the impact of investing in local food for schools. Living in Arkansas with my two little girls – who attend public school and participate in the school meal program – I see how vital these programs are for the health and wellbeing of our kids, economy and communities. Thanks to the growth of the farm-to-school movement, the North Little Rock lunch-tray experience is becoming more and more common across the country.While I faced empty shelves at my local Kroger early in the pandemic, supply-chain shortages affected school cafeterias in unimaginable ways. Meeting nutrition regulations became nearly impossible as basic staples like fresh produce and milk suddenly became unavailable, leaving school nutrition professionals scrambling to provide balanced meals. Food insecurity surged as communities relied more heavily on school meals, yet the systems in place to meet that need were breaking down. In response to these unprecedented challenges, schools across the country began to turn to local sources for food like never before – partnering directly with farmers to keep meals coming and meet community needs.The food supply chain has still not fully recovered from the disruptive effects of the pandemic, and growing challenges such as bird flu and labor uncertainties exacerbate the problem. Schools and the communities they serve want to serve good, locally grown and prepared food, but taking the programs from activities like an occasional taste-test of apples from a nearby orchard to a full transformation of menus away from ultra-processed foods and big food manufacturers is going to require more support. It’s going to require investments like the Local Food for Schools Program.In 2021, an incredibly effective solution arose to both feed schoolchildren well and support (mostly rural) American farmers: the Commodity Credit Corporation’s Local Food for Schools Program. That initial $200m investment went directly through states and into local farms across the country specifically for school meals. The next round of $660m was intended to expand to include early childcare programs.The program was successful, an investment of our tax dollars right back into our communities. US farmers typically earn 15.9 cents for every dollar spent on food. But when schools purchase directly from farmers, 100% of every dollar goes to farmers. And now a program that provided critical support has been canceled in the name of government efficiency.John Wahrmund, a friend of mine and third-generation beef farmer in rural Arkansas, benefited from the Local Food for Schools Program. Selling to schools became a new and vital market for his farm. To meet demand, Wahrmund invested tens of thousands of dollars in processing and refrigeration equipment to ensure his high-quality, grass-fed beef fit the strict regulations for selling to schools.View image in fullscreenNow those sales will end. Without the kickstart these funds provide, cash-strapped schools are forced to go back to the cheapest products because local farmers are easily undercut by multinational food companies. When I called Wahrmund to ask how he was holding up, he told me: “[The Local Food for Schools Program] is everything for my sales. Without this, it will literally shut me down. I have focused solely on schools.”He has been driving across Arkansas, not just the North Little Rock school district but from Fayetteville to Hope, to get his beef into school cafeterias. “It will be over – not just with me, but with all the farmers trying to serve the school lunch program. Not just beef [producers], rice, vegetables, all of it.”The National School Lunch Program has always been tied to the fate of farmers in our country. Of the National School Lunch Act of 1946, which created the program, then president Harry Truman said: “In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers; and in the National School Lunch Act, the Congress has contributed immeasurably both to the welfare of our farmers and the health of our children.”At a 23 January nomination hearing to Congress, Brooke Rollins, who is now the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, stated that she aimed to support rural communities, bolster domestic markets and ensure that nutrition programs are efficient. Just last week, she and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, moved forward with “Make America healthy again” (Maha) commitments to “create and implement policies that promote healthy choices, healthy families and healthy outcomes”.The Local Food for Schools program was exactly that kind of policy. It was more than just fresh thinking. It was a proven, common-sense investment that gave farmers and school nutrition programs a vital boost.March is when farmers plan their next growing season, and when school food professionals set their menus. Now, without this funding, farmers like Wahrmund may go out of business, and school food programs – already operating on razor-thin margins of an average of $1.40 per tray – will struggle to provide nourishing meals to students who rely on them every day. Arkansas, the most food-insecure state in the nation, stood to receive over $8m of the funds. With working families already struggling with rising food costs, eliminating this support is not just shortsighted – it’s harmful.This funding wasn’t government inefficiency or a liberal scheme; it was an investment in our children’s health, our farmers’ livelihoods and the resilience of our communities. Rolling back this support isn’t just a mistake; it betrays every principle of public health and supporting farmers, America’s first entrepreneurs and essential workers. As Rollins said to Fox News this week: “If we are making mistakes, we will own those mistakes and we will reconfigure.” Rollins herself has identified “creat[ing] new opportunities to connect America’s farmers to nutrition assistance programs” in her vision for the agriculture department.The USDA continues to assess its programs and funding. It must correct course and reinstate this vital funding, but it must do so immediately. Speaking on behalf of 20,000-plus National Farm to School Network members from across the US, I ask Rollins to restore this robust local foods market program and transform school food so that meals like that North Little Rock lunch can become the norm. More

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      Free meals v hungry children: is this the school lunch election? | Marcus Weaver-Hightower

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      The humble school meal is having a moment. With the nomination of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, as Kamala Harris’s running mate, many voters and pundits are suddenly talking about school meals. And that’s good, because the stakes are high for the national school lunch and school breakfast programs since the campaigns and their parties have very different records and plans.Since Walz became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, an image of him has frequently circulated. In the photograph, he’s surrounded by smiling children hugging him after he signed a 2023 bill making school meals universally free for all Minnesota children. His was the fourth state to commit to feeding all children at school; now nine states have done so, and more are considering similar measures. No more forms to fill out to prove your income, which busy parents can forget or that get crumpled in a backpack. No more penalizing children when their parents fall behind on lunch accounts. Every kid gets fed, powering them up for their day’s work learning and growing.By most measures, the Minnesota program has been successful and popular. Participation in the meals program soared, increasing 15% at lunch and 37% at breakfast compared with the previous year. Due to those increases, the economies of scale improved, and some districts have been able to invest more in scratch cooking with ingredients from local farmers. It turns out that relieving cafeteria staff of the duty to go after parents who fall behind on lunch payments leaves them more time to focus on food quality.Minnesota’s registered voters are overwhelmingly happy with the program, too. A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed that 72% agreed with the legislation, including 90% of liberals and 57% of conservatives. Even 59% of Trump voters in 2020 agreed. In online forums, Minnesota commenters tend to be remarkably supportive of feeding all children, even if they don’t have any themselves or if they think the food could be better. Parents rave about the convenience and savings.Minnesota’s success isn’t an outlier, but a consistent feature of free meals for all. A 2022 study of the national Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which provides universally free meals nationwide in districts that have a poverty rate of 25% or more, found that more kids eat when the meal is free. That’s true even among kids who were already eligible for free or reduced-price meals, suggesting that stigma is keeping many from accepting assistance. Even more helpful, families with children in schools that provide meals tend to spend less at the grocery store while still improving the quality of their diets. And, perhaps most important, research consistently shows that school meals improve students’ academic performance, behavior and health outcomes.It’s not assured that a Harris-Walz administration would push such legislation nationally. Harris has mentioned school meal programs at least twice, once in a 2017 Facebook post deploring lunch shaming and recently on X, when she touted Walz’s school lunch program as a sign of support for the middle class. But if the Democratic ticket does put the issue on its platform or list of priorities, school meals would at least have a knowledgable champion in Walz. He has seen it work on the ground, and he knows the benefits that it brings to the vast majority of families with children in his state.Meanwhile, Minnesota Republican lawmakers have criticized the free meals program. State representative Kristin Robbins’s complaint is typical: “All the low-income students who need – and we want to provide, make sure no one goes hungry – they were getting [meals] through the free and reduced lunch program. This [new legislation] gave free lunch to all the wealthy families … Is that really a priority?” Walz’s reply to this argument dripped with irony: “Isn’t that rich? Our Republican colleagues were concerned this would be a tax cut for the wealthiest.” The year before, the Minnesota GOP proposed a $3.5bn tax cut that largely would have benefited the wealthiest 20%. Feeding all the state’s schoolchildren, even after going over budget because it was so popular, costs only about one-seventh of that.Republicans at the national level, too, disdain expanding access to free meals and improving nutrition standards. In March, the Republican Study Committee, a caucus to which roughly three-quarters of all Republican House members belong, released its 2025 budget proposal. It called for ending the CEP for high-poverty districts. Doing so would snatch school meals from millions of children currently receiving them, shifting that cost back to their families. It would also probably increase the bureaucracy for schools, though Republicans claim that this administrative system is rife with “fraud and abuse”. While there have been high-profile cases of fraud in the school meals programs (for instance, a Chicago area nutrition director was recently convicted of stealing $1.5m, largely in chicken wings), most identified “abuse” entails clerical errors like giving wrongly categorized meals (free or reduced-price) to kids very near the income cutoffs or ringing up a meal without one of the required components on the tray, like enough vegetables. I would also point out that, if all children got the meals free, there would be no “fraud” in giving a hungry child a school meal, and we could save the labor and cost of all that paperwork.Reducing access to free school meals is also a priority of the now-infamous Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next administration. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but his ties to it are indisputable and a second Trump White House would probably be well populated with its adherents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRegarding school meals, Project 2025 repeats the willful deception that the federal lunch and breakfast programs are “specifically for children in poverty”. In truth, from their beginnings, these programs were meant for all children. But they always made allowances for impoverished children’s access – not only poor children, but inclusive of poor children. The authors of Project 2025 argue that any expansion of free meals is against the “original intent” and creates “an entitlement for students from middle- and upper-income homes”. (I wonder what they think of all those wealthy children getting free textbooks?) Their stated policy goals are to “work with lawmakers to eliminate CEP” and to “reject efforts to create universal free school meals”.While Trump himself may know little about school meals policy (I have never found an instance of him directly talking about it), his first administration set out immediately to relax nutrition standards set under President Obama. The very first policy announcement from Sonny Perdue, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, was that his department would seek to bring back higher-fat chocolate milk, reduce whole grain requirements and stop sodium reductions. And despite the US Department of Agriculture’s own research findings that Obama-era rules had made school meals significantly healthier and debunking claims that plate waste was increasing, one of the last acts of the Trump USDA was to propose a further weakening of nutrition standards to require fewer fruits and allow yet more usually high-salt items such as pizza and hash browns. But the clock ran out on that proposal, and the Biden-Harris administration then increased school meals’ nutrition standards.Given the Republicans’ legislative goals and the direction of one of the GOP’s leading thinktanks, a second Trump administration would almost surely unravel access to school meals and gut hard-won, incremental gains that have made them healthier. All this despite nationwide polls that indicate a majority of US voters agree that all kids should get universally free school meals. More

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      Milking it: bill aims to bring dairy staple back to US schools

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      “Let them drink milk!”A bipartisan bill to allow US schools to serve whole milk, in addition to low-fat options, is garnering support, as some call the attempts to bring back the dairy staple a waste of time.The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is a bill that would allow schools to serve whole milk and 2% milk during lunchtime.Both dairy options were phased out in 2010 after the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which mandated that schools serve 1% or fat-free milk to meet health guidelines aimed at combating childhood obesity, according to Where the Food Comes From.The Whole Milk Act comes as alternative dairy options like soy and oat milk have maintained their popularity. Plant-based dairy or protein is popular among 38% of US adults, according to Mintel, a market research group.While the bill has gained bipartisan support, some legislators criticized the legislation as a waste of time.Pennsylvania representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat, condemned legislators for spending time to advance the milk bill versus addressing the gun violence epidemic.“The American people are crying out for Congress to act, and yet the House of Representatives is using its precious time to debate chocolate milk,” Scanlon said.Democratic congressman Mike Thompson of California echoed the need for Congress to address gun violence instead of attempting to bring back whole milk.“I spent the entire weekend in my district and not one person came to me to change the law on chocolate milk,” Thompson said, adding that gun violence remains a leading cause of death among children and teens.Opponents of the bill have also said that low-fat options currently offered in schools already are already nutritionally sufficient, minus the saturated fat.Meanwhile, Republican representatives from all swaths of the country spoke in support of the act and the urgent need to bring whole milk back into schools.Wisconsin representative Derrick Van Orden decried plant-based dairy such as soy and almond milk as “not real milk”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Milk comes from a mammal,” Van Orden said.Illinois representative Mary Miller called the previous removal of whole milk from schools a facet of “radical Obama administration policies led by Michelle Obama”, referencing the former first lady’s campaign to end childhood obesity.North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx evoked Santa Claus’s affinity for cookies and milk to advocate for a return of whole milk in schools.“The nutrients in whole milk … provide the fuel Santa needs to travel the whole globe in one night. Whole milk is the unsung hero of his Christmas journey,” Foxx said.Some Democrats also spoke in support of the pro-whole milk legislation.Kim Schrier, a Democrat representative from Washington and the bill’s co-sponsor, said that more milk options would encourage children to avoid more sugary drink options at lunchtime.“I would much rather have children drinking milk, even whole milk, than juice,” said Schrier, the Wall Street Journal reported. More