- Submit verbal or written testimony,
- Share personal stories + experience,
- Engage your Representatives,
- Attend a listening session or hearing
The GFA Food + Ag Policy Working Group advocates for the redistribution of resources, opportunity and power into communities, most notably, communities of color that throughout history and today are overwhelmingly impacted by the industrial food system.
Through story, data, education and community engagement, the GFA-Working Group organizes around the policies that uphold and demonstrate what a ‘transformed’ food system might and could be. Our primary policies support food and land access for everyone.
We work to mobilize the Greenwich community in the following ways:
Through story, data, education and community engagement, the GFA-Working Group organizes around the policies that uphold and demonstrate what a ‘transformed’ food system might and could be. Our primary policies support food and land access for everyone.
We work to mobilize the Greenwich community in the following ways:
For more information on how to get involved email us
at gfa@thefoodshednetwork.org
FOOD and AGRICULTURE
POLICY + ADVOCACY
Advancing Greenwich’s food security initiatives by strengthening
& leveraging relationships, knowledge and networks
WHO WE ARE
&
STATEWIDE COALITIONS
School Meals For All Coalition
F2S Collaborative Policy Action Team
CT Zero Waste Coalition
Rachel Khanna,
Greenwich resident
Jan DeAngelo,
Greenwich Pollinator Pathway
Ali Ghiorse,
The Foodshed Network
Geoffrey Anderson,
Greenwich Jewish Family Services
The Biden administration created the Local Food For Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFSP) and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) during the COVID 19 pandemic to strengthen local supply chains. Biden’s USDA provided $1 billion in grants to states, which then made money available to school districts, food banks and distribution hubs to buy produce, meat, fish, dairy from over 8,000 local farmers nationwide. Both programs gave small diversified farms direct access to sell produce to schools, healthcare programs and food banks.
LFSP: provided funding for schools to procure food from small local farmers
LFPA: provided funding for food banks to procure food from small local farmers
In addition to building out regional supply chain infrastructure, and relationships between stakeholders, LFPA and LFSP supported the health and well being of students, families experiencing food insecurity and underserved communities, while infusing financial resources into small farming businesses. Hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide were invested in the health of communities and local food economies. Here in CT, small farmers sowed seeds in February, expecting the second round of funding for both programs to continue. However, as of March 7, 2025 a total of 1.1 billion dollars nationwide and 10 million dollars for CT, was canceled by the current USDA.
The cancelation of LFSP impacts GPS: Between 2022 - 2025 the Connecticut Depart of Education received $1.873 million from the USDA to fund the Local Food For Schools Program. Of that $1.873 million Greenwich Public Schools received a total of $44,000, currently being spent down on local food from the Northwest CT Food Hub and other local vendors.
Read an update of federal Farm To School cancelations and action steps you can take to preserve state programs:
by Dawn Crayco, FoodCorps Northeast Regional Policy Director at FoodCrops here.
Full list: federal food and farm program cuts + cancelations here.
USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks
Read here.
Will Local Food Survive Trump's USDA
Read here.
Opinion: The fallout of cancelling funding for food in pantries and schools. 'Real people, real farms, and real families'
Read here.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Call or write our federal delegation with your concerns over
the canceled programs and ask that they be reinstated.
Representative Jim Himes: 203 333 6600
Senator Richard Blumenthal 860 258 6940
Senator Chris Murphy 860 549 8463
Karen Saggese,
Food Rescue US-Fairfield County
Raised Bill 6917 Act Concerning the Management of Solid Waste. Read the bill.
Campaign pillars.
Legislator questions.
Did you know?!
STATUS UPDATE: WHY BREAKFAST IS SO IMPORTANT -
- With the anticipated policy changes to the USDA’s nutrition budget, our school districts will be left without access to healthy school meals
- Districts/ schools will lose Community Eligibility Provision status
- 100% of families will be required to fill out app. (admin impossibility)
- Cuts to SNAP and Medicaid will not only increase food insecurity but also make fewer children automatically eligible for school meals
- What we need to feed all Connecticut kids breakfast: FY 26 and FY 27 - $13 million PLUS estimated $4 million to make CEP districts whole
- Consider this: amounts to just half of 1% of the annual budget of over $26 Billion. Every dollar spent on school meals produces a $9 value in return, which is reinvested into our local economies!
The American Heart Association, a champion of universal school meals, is the leading advocate for the bill. The CT School Meals for All Coalition is a strong proponent because the funding would go directly to fund school meals. The Finance Committee is holding a hearing on April 13th. In short: H.B. 7273 will provide ALL CT kids with free school meals by utilizing a sugar sweetened beverage tax as sustainable revenue to pay for those meals. It adds two cents per ounce on sweetened beverages - carbonated beverages with added sugar, does not include 100% fruit sweetened, milk, vegetable juice or water. The tax would raise about $206 million, SM4A cost is about $106 million.
School Meals + FTS
Communications Toolkit.
STATUS UPDATE:
Voted out of the Environment Committee, currently in Legislative Commissioners Office (screened and written into law)
Environment Committee held a hearing on January 28th.
STATUS UPDATE:
- Received a Public Hearing on 2/19/25
- A Joint Favorable vote was received on 2/28 to move the bill out of the Environment Committee.
- It was filed with the Legislative Commissioner’s Office for drafting and processing on 3/3.
- Currently in Appropriations.
This Bill proposes to:
- Fund RecycleCT with $250,000
- Appropriate $500,000 to DEEP for Commercial Organics enforcement
- Require commercial organic waste generators to adopt a written food donation policy
- Apply $1.50 solid waste assessment to additional waste streams
- Authorize hiring of municipal and regional waste coordinators using miniature liquor bottle fees
- Authorize a DEEP study of the need and viability of extended producer responsibility programs for consumer packaging
STATUS UPDATE:
H.B. 6916: 850 supporters, must be voted out of the Environment Committee by March 31st. The CT Pesticide Reform Coalition is asking for us to contact local representatives with a simple but urgent message. A quick call or email can make all the difference in ensuring H.B. 6916 gets a chance to be heard by the CT General Assembly. This bill will help protect Connecticut residents from exposure to this dangerous insecticide. It will also protect the state's birds and pollinators, both of which are declining in great numbers.
The Environment Committee held a hearing on H.B. 6916 An Act Concerning the Use of Neonicotinoids on February 19th. Since then neonic restrictions were added to the large climate and resilience bill S.B. 9. This is good news-- it provides another avenue by which we may achieve our goals--except that the language included in S.B. 9 is weaker than the language of H.B. 6916.
S.B. 9 has a public hearing on Monday, March 3, so there is opportunity to ask that the language be amended to match the language of H.B. 6916, that covers both aesthetic uses, on lawns and gardens, and agricultural ones, on some coated seeds and outdoor use at nurseries.
Learn more here.
The Governor's budget included school breakfast for the next two years.
- Year 1: Reduced-Price eligible students are able to eat breakfast and lunch at no cost.
- Year 2: School Breakfast will be free for all students attending schools serving breakfast.
H.B. No. 6864 An Act Concerning The State Budget For the Biennium Ending June Thirtieth,
2027, And Making Appropriations Therefor. (Universal Breakfast) Read the bill.
H.B. 7273 An Act Imposing A Tax On Certain Sweetened Beverages, Syrups and Powders And Dedicating The Revenue Generated To A Universal Free School Meals Program. Read the bill.
S.B. 1418 An Act To Reduce Barriers to Food Security Revised bill here.
H.B. 7021 An Act Concerning Funding For Nutrition Assistance Read bill here.
H.B. 7021 A CT Foodshare bill that would "fully fund the Connecticut Nutrition Assistance Program (CT-NAP) at $10 million and it would require that at least 15% of those funds (or $1.5M) be used to purchase fresh food specifically from Connecticut farmers.”
STATUS UPDATE:
- H.B. 7021 was unanimously voted out of the Human Services Committee and will soon go
to the Legislature for a vote. Sign our letter urging support of our $10 million request for funds to purchase Connecticut-sourced food for distribution through the partner network. This letter will show the strong support of our bill, which has over 40 legislative co-sponsors and received more than 70 testimonies of support at a public hearing in late February.
- Establishes the Connecticut Food Security Fund with a funding mechanism (1% of prepared meals tax)
- Detailed grant program for nonprofit organizations to establish or expand Food Security Hubs
- Increases minimum SNAP benefits to $95 and adds a Healthy Food Incentive Program(matching $1 for $1 at farmers' markets)
- Medicaid waiver request, with reporting requirements on its impact on chronic health conditions
- Development of a Restaurant Meals Program for elderly, disabled, and homeless SNAP recipients
- Requires 15% of funding for emergency food programs to be spent on Connecticut farm products
- $10 million appropriation to the Department of Social Services for supplemental nutrition programs
Learn the breakdown here