Federal
A package of legislation passed roughly once every 5 years with huge impacts on farming livelihood, how and what food is grown, and who has access to it. This bill authorizes and funds tons of programs including crop insurance and SNAP (formerly known as food stamps)
What is The Farm Bill
A nutrition incentive program that provides a dollar-for-dollar match for SNAP/EBT and NC Farmers Market Nutrition Program benefits. The match can be used at farmers markets, food hubs, and direct agricultural retail outlets in North Carolina.
What is Double Up Bucks?
Local government bodies that oversee specific areas including parks and recreations, education, and health.
What are local boards?
Formerly known as Food Stamps, this flagship program provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget
What is SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
A way for landowners to “sign up” to ensure their land can stay within a given family instead of being sold if some family members aren’t on the same page about the future of the land. In North Carolina, there have been instances of forced sales, partition, etc., particularly around Black farmers
What is Heirs Property?
A strategic financial plan developed by local government leaders to allocate resources and funds for the community
What is a city or county budget?
A federal bill that invested billions in working lands conservation programs, making more money available to all farmers and conservation activities. This pool of funding was recently revoked via an Executive Order by President Trump, though the reversal is highly contested and currently being reviewed via lawsuits
What is conservation programs and/or the Inflation Reduction Act?
A campaign working to ensure that every child in NC public schools has access to a free breakfast and lunch while at school.
What is School Meals for All?
Centrally located facilities with a business management structure facilitating locally or regionally produced food products’ aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing. Some examples in North Carolina include Working Landscapes, Feast Down East, and Men Farmer Foodshare, and Women United
What are Food Hubs
The only way for congress to take action with a simple majority of the Senate (51 or 50 with the vice president as a tie breaker, rather than the usual 60 which is needed for any legislation to pass). This process can deal with mandatory spending, revenue, and the federal debt limit, and the Senate can pass one bill per year affecting each subject, though in practice it has historically only passed one per year. Currently, the margins in the Senate are very slim, so this is the only way Republicans believe they can pass anything through.
What is budget reconciliation?
A local food procurement program where food hubs purchase from local producers and distribute to communities in need
What is FarmsShare?
An organized group of stakeholders from various sectors that works to address food systems issues and needs at the local, state, regional, or federal level.
What are Food Policy Coalitions?
A program that uses non-competitive cooperative agreements to provide funding for state, tribal, and territorial governments to purchase foods produced within the state or within 400 miles of the delivery destination to help support local, regional, and underserved producers. This program looks different in every state, in NC we use the funding through a program called FarmsShare.
What is the Local Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA)
A state-level office that is responsible for all statewide agriculture related issues, including agronomy, animal health, gas and oil inspection, crop and livestock statistics, USDA commodity distribution, state farm operations, agricultural marketing and promotion, seed and fertilizer inspection, forest management and protection, and more
What is the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services?
These for-profit entities can play an important role in addressing hunger and promoting community food systems by implementing internal policy changes and donating money and/or surplus resources to local food banks, community kitchens, and community-led organizations and initiatives?
What are corporations?