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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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for West Virginia News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

The House Republicans have now passed the sweeping piece of budgetary legislation requested by President Trump. Colloquially known as the “megabill,” the legislation passed by a single vote with no Democratic support, and is primarily aimed at extending the tax cuts for wealthy Americans that Trump signed in 2017. But the megabill contains significant agriculture and food-related provisions as well, including cuts to food stamps and financial assistance to meat and dairy producers.

It’s worth noting at the top that this bill isn’t yet law, and won’t become law until the Senate passes it as well. As is usually the case with big pieces of legislation, the Senate will likely pass its own version of the bill, which will then need to be reconciled with the House bill and then passed in identical form by both chambers.

In other words, none of this is set in stone yet, and the bill will almost certainly change before becoming law. Although there are some debates within the Republican caucus over what provisions the final bill will include, the broad strokes will likely remain the same, says Andrew deCoriolis, executive director of Farm Forward.

“The bill is really a grab bag of Republican and meat and dairy industry interests,” deCoriolis tells Sentient. “The disagreement is really not whether or not we should be cutting taxes and giving tax breaks to big companies and millionaires and billionaires, but whether we should cut more social safety net programs to pay for it.”

Let’s take a look at what’s in the megabill, and how it will — and won’t — affect American farming and food systems.

No EATS Act

The GOP’s 2024 farm bill proposal, which did not pass, included a version of the EATS Act, a highly controversial bill that would ban states from enacting laws that interfere with the interstate commerce of agricultural products.

The primary goal of the EATS Act — as well as its more-recent successor, the Food Security & Farm Protection Act — is to overturn California’s Proposition 12, which requires farmers to give egg-laying hens, pigs and veal calves a certain amount of living space in animal farms (a modest increase of space from standard factory farms). The law also requires that all eggs, pork and veal sold in the state be produced in accordance with these requirements, even if the products were produced out of state.

Republican lawmakers did insert some of the 2024 farm bill’s provisions into the megabill. But the EATS Act wasn’t one of them; the megabill contains no language that would diminish, weaken or overturn Proposition 12.

The reason for this — one of them, at least — is that Republicans in the Senate plan on passing the megabill using budget reconciliation, a legislative maneuver that allows lawmakers to circumvent any potential filibuster and pass a bill with only 51 votes. But the tradeoff is that any bill passed using budget reconciliation can only include budget-related provisions, and overturning Proposition 12 has nothing to do with federal spending. As such, it wasn’t, and couldn’t have been, included.

Because the megabill contains some components of the proposed 2024 farm bill, its successful passage could make a new farm bill an even lower priority for lawmakers than it already is. And while this is pure speculation, this could be good news for Proposition 12, as the farm bill was the primary mechanism by which Republicans were attempting to repeal the California law.

Cutting SNAP Funding

SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as food stamps. Around 41 million Americans receive SNAP benefits every year, which they can use to buy groceries.

The megabill cuts federal SNAP funding by around $300 million over the next decade, ostensibly by shifting some of the cost burden to states. The reason this is being characterized as a cut in funding, rather than simply a redistribution of the cost burden, is that there’s no guarantee that any state will be both willing and able to cover the difference.

Historically, the federal government has funded 100 percent of the SNAP program. The megabill breaks from this tradition by requiring states to fund at least five percent, and potentially up to 25 percent, of SNAP benefits that their residents receive. The exact percentage depends on each state’s historical “error rate,” or the frequency with which it has over- or under-paid SNAP recipients in the past.

States with higher error rates will have to shoulder a bigger share of SNAP funding. An analysis of historical error rates by Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that, if the past is any guide, every state other than South Dakota will potentially have to fund 15 percent or more of its SNAP benefits in at least some years under the new bill.

This isn’t the only way in which the bill slashes SNAP funding. In addition to paying for the benefits themselves, the federal government also reimburses states for the cost of administering SNAP, but the megabill will reduce that funding from 50 percent to 25 percent, again shifting more costs to individual states. It also raises the age threshold of the program’s already-stringent work requirements from 54 to 64.

“It’s not subtle in what it’s doing,” deCoriolis says. “This bill seems like a massive transfer of wealth from hungry Americans and low-to-medium income Americans who rely on supplemental food programs.”

Subsidies For Big Meat And Dairy

The megabill also increases subsidies for the meat and dairy industries, both of which are already heavily subsidized by the federal government.

First, it increases both the amount of money that dairy producers receive through the Dairy Margin Coverage Program and the number of producers who are eligible for the program. This is a price stabilization program aimed at protecting the economic wellbeing of the dairy industry when milk prices fall below certain levels.

“That’s a direct transfer of wealth,” deCoriolis says of the DMC expansion. “That’s a direct giveaway to dairy companies.”

Similarly, the bill raises the reference prices for the USDA’s commodity programs, which function similarly to the DMC but for things like rice and wheat instead of dairy. In effect, this means that the government will subsidize farmers of these commodities even more generously than they already do.

The bill also increases funding and eligibility for various livestock subsidy programs, which compensate livestock farmers when their animals are killed by predators or disease. As deCoriolis notes, many vertically-integrated agribusinesses produce both livestock and grains to feed the livestock, and thus stand to benefit in both cases from the megabill’s increased support levels.

“[They’ll] get subsidies on both ends of the production,” deCoriolis says. “It’s a smart way to capture even more taxpayer dollars.”

Tax Credits for Biofuels

The bill eliminates most of the clean energy tax credits established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but retains and actually extends one: The 45Z tax credit. Officially known as the Clean Fuel Production Credit, it’s ostensibly aimed at providing a tax incentive for producers of clean transportation fuels; in practice, however, it’s most commonly claimed by producers of biofuels, the environmental benefits of which are highly questionable at best.

This is relevant to agriculture because biofuels are often produced using manure from factory farms, which themselves cause an enormous amount of environmental destruction in a number of different ways. As such, large industrial animal farms that produce biofuels will financially benefit from the extension of the 45Z tax credit.

“It’s just a biofuel expansion program,” deCoriolis says. “Our own investigation from earlier this year showed that a lot of the IRA money that was going to biodigesters was being used to help expand factory farms, especially in the Midwest. This bill would substantially expand the 45Z credit program, and would give it another four years of life.”

Other Provisions

The megabill is over 1,000 pages long, and contains a number of other measures that will affect American agriculture. It increases crop insurance subsidies and tax deductions for businesses that include farms, and reduces the estate tax, which taxes the inheritance of property.

This last provision is relevant to agriculture because farms are frequently passed from generation to generation in the same family.

“You’ve got a lot of ranchers who pass on these extremely large, valuable ranches in their wills, and they don’t want to pay taxes on it,” deCoriolis says.

What Happens Next

With all of that being said, it’s worth stressing again that this bill will almost certainly undergo changes if and before it becomes law. DeCoriolis notes that the Republican Senate caucus includes some moderate lawmakers who might object to the megabill’s spending cuts, which apply not only to SNAP but also Medicare and Medicaid.

“Those are programs that literally every American in every geography uses, [including] lots and lots of constituents in the states that are represented by Republican Senators,” deCoriolis says. “I could see them kicking a different version of the bill back to the House, and then having to have some reconciliation process between those versions of the bill.”

Ultimately, we won’t know for sure until the Senate passes its version of the bill — and given that Republicans have only a three-seat majority in that chamber, it may be quite a while until that happens.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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As food insecurity rises across the state, groups fighting hunger are highlighting the need for food that is not only nutritious, but culturally relevant.

Leialoha Kaula is the executive director of the nonprofit KALO HCC, which serves Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The organization started distributing food boxes during the pandemic, and Kaula said the food didn't always meet people's needs - because it wasn't familiar, or they didn't know how to use it.

In response, she said, KALO started including traditional foods in the boxes, like taro root and coconut.

"We saw that it was not just hunger for food, it was that hunger for culture," said Kaula. "It was that hunger for home, that's what was filled."

Visits to food banks in the state have risen sharply in the last year, and data shows Pacific Islander Oregonians are twice as likely to experience hunger than their white neighbors.

Kaula said KALO HCC has also started cultivating taro, a Native Hawaiian staple, and encouraging people to get involved in the project.

"Even though we're here in Oregon, that's still a connection to home," said Kaula. "It's about how we as Indigenous people are caring for the land."

Amid federal cuts to food programs, Kaula said she wants to see Oregon focus more on providing culturally relevant foods, so all communities in the state can thrive.

"To really, truly have a healthy Oregon," said Kaula, "we have to make sure that we're serving all the communities in a way that makes them feel seen, heard, and feed them in that way."

With the start of summer, organizations across Arkansas are ramping up programs to ensure kids have access to healthy food. The No Kid Hungry campaign, operated by Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance and Share Our Strength, connects kids to federal food programs.

Patty Barker, director of Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance and Share Our Strength, said students can receive meals at designated sites such as a schools or community centers, through the Summer EBT program that provides families with 120 dollars per student each month or the non-congregate meals for students in rural areas.

"That's a several meal day package - a box - [it] could be for a few days or even for a week's worth of meals provided for pick-up by the parents or distribution straight to the home of the students," she explained.

There are USDA authorized Summer Meals Sites in almost every Arkansas county. A link to find meal sites is available on the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance website.

Arkansas ranks fourth highest in the nation for childhood hunger, with nearly one in four children facing food hardship, that's down 19% in the last ten years. Barker said more children are being helped because of the programs.

"We see it for sure through the participation of the various types of partners that are participating in the program offering meal in these new ways, in rural areas especially," she continued. "And the same for even on-site meals, those districts recognize the need."

She added that sponsors are still needed. School districts, faith-based and nonprofit organizations and local civic groups can still sign up to be a food distribution site.


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