Reform farm subsidies and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
Make it near impossible to get low-income benefits and eliminate free school lunches
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From pages 293-309
From the outset, the next Administration should: Denounce efforts to place ancillary issues like climate change ahead of food productivity and affordability when it comes to agriculture.
Too often, agricultural policy becomes synonymous with farm subsidy policy. This is unfortunate, because making them synonymous fails to recognize that agricultural policy covers a wide range of issues, including issues that are outside the proper scope of the USDA, such as environmental regulation.
Farmers eligible to participate in ARC or PLC are generally already able to purchase federal crop insurance, policies that protect against shortfalls in expected revenue whether caused by lower prices or smaller harvests. The ARC program is especially egregious because farmers are being protected from shallow losses, which is another way of saying minor dips in expected revenue. This is hardly consistent with the concept of providing a safety net to help farmers when they fall on hard times.
Even in a strong economy, work expectations are fairly limited: Individuals who are work-capable and without dependents are required to work or prepare for work for 20 hours per week. The work requirements are then implemented unless the state requests a waiver from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services. Waivers from statutory work requirements can be approved in two instances: an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent or a lack of sufficient jobs.
Federal meal programs for K–12 students were created to provide food to children from low-income families while at school. Today, however, federal school meals increasingly resemble entitlement programs that have strayed far from their original objective and represent an example of the ever-expanding federal footprint in local school operations.
The Department of Agriculture’s current functions are as diverse and wide-reaching as providing loans for rural development and defending U.S. livestock from flesh-eating worms.
Project 2025 would cut eligibility for SNAP benefits while moving the program to the HHS. And even though free school lunches have consistently been found to improve academic performance, the Heritage Foundation’s plan would restrict school meals provided through the USDA and repeal the dietary guidelines that those meals are based on.
Under Project 2025, the USDA’s scope would narrow to the efficient production of food, undoing the department’s current strategy to promote renewable energy and protect national forests and agricultural land from the climate crisis.