One version of the Farm Bill being debated in Congress would cut billions of dollars in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from agriculture-dependent states, including Iowa and groups fighting hunger in the state are pushing back.
The version of the Farm Bill released by Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., the House Agriculture Committee Chair, would cut nearly $30 billion in SNAP benefits over the next decade, including $170 million in Iowa, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Luke Elzinga, board chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, said based on the projections, the cuts would have a big effect on the most vulnerable people in the state.
"I think that's especially concerning," Elzinga stressed. "Because right now, we have food banks and food pantries across the state that are facing record-breaking demand."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Thrifty Food Plan, which creates funding formulas for SNAP and other food assistance programs, would also freeze future benefits. Thompson and others have argued their version of the Farm Bill amounts to responsible budgeting and planning.
Elzinga's coalition has tracked numbers showing SNAP benefits are already not enough to keep up with providing the lowest-cost meals in the state and come in about 20% below what it takes to make ends meet at the dinner table.
"We're talking about families getting typically less than $6 a day per person," Elzinga pointed out. "It's really already just not enough to get by. So many people are struggling with higher food prices, housing costs and child care costs."
This is not the final version of the Farm Bill to be debated but Elzinga argued releasing a measure with such major cuts to SNAP benefits is not a good starting point for negotiations. In his view, it creates the perception for Congress, low-income people are not high on the priority list.
Rep. Zach Nunn, R-IA, has been a leading GOP voice on the Farm Bill from his seat on the Agriculture Committee. Nunn, who is widely known for conservative stances on social issues, has come under criticism for saying the farm bill's "nutritional assistance (goes) largely to blue state communities."
Nunn has also previously endorsed steep budget cuts that would impact hunger programs like WIC and SNAP.
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Food insecurity is rising in Indiana.
A Feeding Indiana's Hungry study found 76% of surveyed households expect to need food assistance as often or more in the next year. Nearly two-thirds of those who receive monthly assistance run out of benefits within two weeks.
Emily Weikert Bryant, executive director of Feeding Indiana's Hungry, said more than 70% of respondents had to choose between food and transportation, while over half had to choose between food and housing.
"The stark reality revealed by this study is really a wake-up call for all of us," Bryant emphasized. "It's unacceptable that so many Hoosiers are forced to make impossible choices between feeding your families and covering basic needs like transportation and housing."
Bryant noted many skipped meals. Some faced even tougher choices, like food or medical care.
The survey showed having a job is not always enough. Bryant pointed out more than half of surveyed households had at least one working adult. Many who were unemployed cited illness or disability. Others lost benefits because their income was just over the limit. Some missed paperwork deadlines and lost benefits.
"Even those who are accessing the federal nutrition programs, it's not enough and that's where the charitable sector continues to feel that gap," Bryant stressed. "In the climate that we're talking about right now, we need to make sure that the program is not being cut."
Feeding Indiana's Hungry is calling for action, saying food banks need donations, volunteers, and stronger policy support to keep up with demand. Bryant argued federal and state programs must do more to ensure families do not go hungry.
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The Texas Department of Agriculture is accepting sponsor applications for its 2025 Summer Meal Programs.
The Summer Food Service Program and the Seamless Summer Option, for schools that operate the National School Lunch Program, provide summer meals for students 18 years old and younger.
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said more than 11,000 organizations have participated in the past.
"We reimburse people that provide those summer meals," he said. "Now we work with schools, we work with community organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs, libraries, community centers, faith-based organizations, churches."
First-time sponsors must apply by April 15. Previous sponsors have until May 1. Applications are available at SquareMeals.org.
Miller said the agriculture department hopes to reach children in rural areas, those with a large concentration of migrant workers, and places where more than 50% of children are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
"It's real easy for people who want to find these summer meal locations. Between June 1 and the end of August they can find a site," he said. "All you do is dial 211, they'll ask what your ZIP code is where you live, and they'll give you a site close to you. Or if you want to go on the web you can visit summerfood.org."
Although federal funds for some programs are being cut, he said, he's not concerned about the summer food program; adding that "feeding hungry children is not a frivolous expense."
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By Gabriella Sotelo for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Sentient/Just and Climate-Friendly Food System-Public News Service Collaboration
For the past four decades or so, the Florin farmers market has been a source for affordable produce for many living in the small Sacramento, California suburb. According to Sam Greenlee, executive director of the Sacramento-based food justice group Alchemist CDC, the market’s vendors take steps to meet the needs of the community. “They tend to set their prices a little bit lower here than at other markets,” Greenlee tells Sentient.
Of the 196,524 households in Sacramento, around 40 percent rely at least in part on California’s food assistance program.
Helping communities eat more plants has many benefits — health and food justice among them — but it’s also good for the climate. Food production accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to Brent Kim, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, the largest source of these food-related emissions comes from the farm itself, not food miles. “What we eat and how it was produced matter more for the climate than how far it travels.” Eating a plant-based diet, even for just one day a week, can have a greater positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions than eating local food every day, Kim says.
While the largest source of food-related emissions stems from meat made from methane-belching ruminant animals, namely beef and lamb, successful grassroots initiatives, like community gardens and farmers markets, play an important role when they help shift what people eat. Local programs encourage sustainable and healthy food choices, but also offer a path for addressing challenges important to each community.
Elizabeth Bowman, former executive director at Food Access LA, sees these local efforts as part of a broader vision for sustainable food that includes, but also goes beyond, greenhouse gas emissions.
“To me, sustainability is very holistic, bottom up, top down, and allows people to have access to healthy foods without barriers,” Bowman says. Transparency and food sovereignty are two very important goals in the work. And that means, Bowman adds, making food choices from the “soil up” — starting with healthy soil but also thinking about whether farm workers have good working conditions.
Bowman’s work with Avenue 33, a small hillside farm in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, illustrates this approach. Avenue 33 partners with Los Angeles Leadership Academy (LALA) to operate LALA Farm, which offers opportunities to zero in on different aspects of food systems. Classes held on the farm include hands-on topics like composting and its climate impacts to science students learning about photosynthesis. Lessons also include the history of agriculture, the farm labor movement and how farming practices of some Indigenous populations compare to contemporary farming.
Both Avenue 33 and LALA farms provide fresh produce to farmers markets that are EBT-authorized (an electronic system that enables people to use government assistance dollars for food purchases) as well as a free weekly food distribution at a nearby school. Food grown on the LALA farm, like tomatoes and peppers, are added weekly to the high school’s salad bar, sometimes alongside a nutrition lesson.
California supplies nearly half of the fruits and vegetables eaten in the United States. Yet a significant portion of the population, around 8.8 million Californians, face food insecurity. The issue is not only economic — though affordability is a key factor — but also one of access, rooted in land-use policies. These policies have contributed to a disparity in food access, with larger supermarkets concentrated in wealthier neighborhoods. This is known as “supermarket redlining,” and forces people to rely on convenience stores or fast food outlets as their main source of food. A 2008 study found that individuals without access to supermarkets were 25 to 46 percent less likely to maintain a healthy diet.
Farmers markets, supported by federal, state and private food assistance programs, are helping to bridge the gap by offering a direct distribution model. While there are systemic abuses that stem from a system of “food apartheid,” these programs are at least an effort to get more produce at competitive prices in markets close to food insecure communities, at prices lower than those in chain grocery stores.
A 2021 study highlighted the role farmers markets can play in reducing food insecurity, noting that by 2019, around 50 percent of farmers markets accepted some form of federal food assistance. Access alone does not address all of the challenges associated with dietary change, programs like California’s Market Match, where EBT value is doubled, can help improve the affordability of fresh, local food. The Florin market has become one of the top 10 EBT markets in the country, with around $300,000 in EBT and Market Match funds spent in 2023.
“Neighborhoods that lack access to fresh produce have an abundance of fast food and heavily processed foods,” Bowman writes, yet “communities are responsive when fresh produce is simply made available and especially when incentivized with programs like Market Match.”
“I think that when people have access to fresh produce, they will buy it,” Bowman told Sentient in an email. There are many reasons they might make a change in what they eat. “In general, fresh produce is less expensive than meat products, so there is evident economic value there,” writes Bowman.
Earlier this year, budget cuts in California threatened the program’s success when California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $37.8 billion cut to the state budget. The threat was averted after advocacy groups, including Alchemist CDC, were able to persuade Newsom to preserve the program’s full $35 million budget.
There are other challenges however, says Kim Bowman, who worked on food security for decades in Southern California. “Accessing healthy food in Los Angeles can be really challenging. While grassroots initiatives are making strides, there is a lack of infrastructure to support these efforts comprehensively.”
Bowman stresses the need for policies that not only help younger generations enter agriculture by making land acquisition easier, but also support farmers adopting regenerative practices. Subsidies for such practices could help reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals and build a more sustainable agricultural sector. However, these efforts must be paired with broader systemic changes. This can mean subsidies for farmers like Bowman mentions, or in other cases, could mean changing livestock productivity.
“Ultimately there’s no one silver bullet recipe for a sustainable food system — and we benefit from a diversity of different scales, including local, regional and, sometimes, national or international,” according Johns Hopkins’s Brent Kim. “The important thing is approaching what we grow, how we grow it, and what we eat with an eye toward kindness, conservation and equity.”
Gabriella Sotelo wrote this article for Sentient. If you have a climate solution story you'd like to share, you can do that through Project Drawdown's Global Solutions Diary.
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