​The Local Food for Schools program paid schools to buy fresh food straight from nearby farms — strawberries, carrots, ground beef, milk — and put it on lunch trays. In 2025, that funding was cancelled: nearly $1 billion in fresh, local food for schools and food banks, gone.

Schools lost the budget overnight. The farms that planted for those contracts ate the loss. And the food that replaced it is exactly the kind we should be serving less of — packaged, processed, built for a shelf instead of a child.

For many kids, a school meal is the most dependable food they get all day. What's on that tray is a decision Congress makes — and as you write the next farm bill, you have the chance to make it right.

We, the undersigned, ask the Senate to restore local food funding for schools in the next farm bill.

Signed by parents, educators, and neighbors across the country.