Assembly Standing Committee on Agriculture

Good afternoon. I want to welcome my colleagues, our panelists and the Administration, stakeholders and Members of the public to today's joint oversight hearing of the Assembly Human Services and Agriculture Committees. I also want to thank the Take a moment to thank my fellow chair from the Committee on Agriculture for the collaboration on this hearing.

Today's discussion is centered on a fundamental issue affecting millions of Californians. All Californians, of course. Food insecurity. Despite being the nation's leading agricultural producer, California faces a troubling paradox. Many of our residents struggle to access fresh, nutritious food, including the very workers who harvest it.

This hearing is an opportunity to examine the state's food assistance programs, the structural barriers limiting access to nutrition, and the role of our agricultural food system in addressing hunger. As of late 2024, 22% of California households, more than 1 in 5 are food insecure. That number is even higher for families with children and communities of color.

Additionally, many of our farm workers, grocery workers, and food service employees who are essential contributors to our food system are among those most affected by food insecurity. Our goal today is to take a deeper look at the economic and policy challenges that perpetuate food insecurity in our state.

From administrative hurdles and food assistance programs like CalFresh to the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food prices, we must explore sustainable solutions that bridge the gap between food abundance and food access.

We will hear from experts, program administrators and community leaders over three panels about real world impact of food insecurity and what is needed to build build a more resilient, equitable food system.

We also want to assess how recent federal policy changes, including the proposed cuts to nutrition assistance, tariffs on agriculture, and mass deportations of immigrants who comprise our farm workers, are affecting Californians. Proposed cuts to our food safety net programs will undoubtedly impact our farmers and the agricultural industry.

And let us not forget that the one, one of the only reasons that programs like CalFresh exist is a result of the Federal Government offering subsidies to farmers during the Great Depression. This hearing is opportunity to highlight the critical relationship between agricultural leaders and safety net advocates.

When agriculture is disrupted, food safety net programs feel the strain just as challenges and food assistance impact demand for agriculture products. As we move through today's hearing, I encourage my colleagues to engage in thoughtful discussion about what is working, where we see gaps, and how we can better support efforts to ensure no Californian goes hungry.

I am going to talk about some of the housekeeping rules after I invite my fellow chair of the Agriculture Committee, Assembly Soria, to make some opening remarks. But I would like to invite Panel one to come up and take a seat and get comfortable whenever you're ready, if you want to come up now.

Great. Thank you. Assemblymember Lee, Good afternoon to everyone who is here. To the panelists, to those that are listening to our joint informational hearing on food insecurity, thank you. To also our staff, both from the Ag Committee and Human Services. Excuse me for putting together all the work for this hearing.

I want to thank the panelists for being here and all those folks who will engage in a thoughtful conversation. As was mentioned by Assemblymember Lee, this topic is very, very, very critical today. But I think especially as we look forward in the next four years and the impacts of the current administration's decisions to cut funding and programs. Obviously food insecurity for me is a very personal issue.

As someone that has grown up in the Central Valley, daughter of farm workers, I grew up in a family that was heavily impacted by food insecurity, even though my parents were toiling in the fields and harvesting the food that they probably sometimes couldn't afford to buy to make sure that we had a healthy and warm meal on our table.

So just this morning I was at a ribbon cutting of the Madera County Food bank as they expanded a new facility to meet the needs of the community today. And what is scary is that with the most recent actions by the this Current Administration that the efforts that local folks have put together in the community may be severely impacted by the federal actions.

And so I'm very interested to hear today from our various panelists, what can we do within the jurisdiction that we have, within the limited resources that we have? But what can we do to really increase resources and really see that this issue is tackled in the best possible way?

As mentioned, as a daughter of farm workers, we know that, and I personally know how farm workers, low income households and seniors really are today struggling to put food on the table, despite many of us living in one of the most productive agricultural regions in the Central Valley.

And so access to affordable, nutritious food is essential for the health and well being of our communities. And so we must do everything we can to ensure that our families have the resources necessary to be able to support their families.

And so obviously the cuts and restrictions to federal food assistance programs like SNAP and WIC will disproportionately harm communities like mine. And I know many communities across the state that are heavily dependent upon these resources and services that are provided by a variety of community organizations. So I'm glad that we are having this conversation today.

I look forward to not just having a conversation, but being thoughtful about ways that we can make policy decisions this legislative session, but also budgetary decisions that will not detrimentally impact our community, but actually uplift some of the hardest working families that today are food insecure.

Thank you so much, Secretary Ross, for being here and I know that you've been waiting patiently through the Ag Committee hearing. So thank you again for being patient and for being here this afternoon to have a great discussion on this issue.

All right, thank you so much, Chair Soria. So just housekeeping rules. We will be taking public comment at the very end of the hearing and we'll do Members discussion after the panel is completed.

I'm going to ask that the panel do maybe five to eight minutes in your opening remarks just so that you can get out the information you want to share with us, but also leave room for discussion for the membership. Also knowing that we are running a little later in the day than we hoped for.

But we do have a really great selection of three panels today and I do want to make be respectful everyone's time so that we do get to every each discussion item. So we definitely would encourage conciseness when possible.

But I'm going to kick it off to our first panel and since Secretary Ross has been so patient today, I don't mind if you wouldn't mind if you would kick us off and have you open if you don't mind.

Apologies to our sister agency who has the bulk of the nutrition programs. I would just like to start by saying thank you for doing this topic.

I think it's one that we could do several times during the year and especially at this particular time because of some of the announcements that have already been made about the federal funding that is critically important to us.

And I guess since you invited us with responses, one of the most important things that can happen is to have very strong, effective and strategic advocacy from our state and all states around the nutrition title of the farm Bill. The farm Bill is over two years behind and coming out.

It's getting more and more difficult to pass a farm Bill that is crucial to all kinds of infrastructure, including research, like we talked about in the previous panel. But over 85% of the spending in the farm Bill is around the nutrition title.

And it's taken a few years for California to come into offering programs through the Department of Food and Agriculture that are actually very complementary to the crucial safety net programs at DSS and the Department of Public Health for finally joining together how the food is grown and especially the kind of food that we grow in this state.

So much of the fresh produce, the tree nuts, in addition to all the dairy products that come from here, that let's make these connections because I think that is the way that we build the bridge to longer term funding and innovation in all of these programs.

I also want to note that I think we're better positioned now than we've ever been because of the funding that became available during COVID and especially the emergency food funding that now has created new infrastructure. The food bank that you're talking about. We have exceptional food bank infrastructure that was never there before.

They were able to add square footage of warehousing. They were able to add. They added refrigeration, which is crucial to all of our crops. When I travel overseas, what they're all looking for is refrigeration and cold storage to have fresh product. Meat, eggs, all of those types of products.

We now have more infrastructure for that than we've ever had before. And we have more mobile options, including the trucks that have historically at food banks, gone out to the farms when we have surplus, to pick that up and take it back into the food banks. So I think that's really an important thing to note.

We do have infrastructure now that we haven't had. I'm just going to list programs that we have that are complementary to the safety net programs and say how grateful I am to the Legislature and to the Governor for putting a lot of focus onto these types of programs in recent years.

However, the oldest program we have is a senior farmers market program. Understanding the vulnerability of seniors. And especially we learn during wildfires how many seniors have moved into more remote areas, oftentimes to be closer to family, but they don't have the same access to food.

And so the senior farmers market is one that we've done for 16 years. It's a very small grant program of approximately $750,000 a year. It's $50 throughout the season that the seniors get. It's targeted to Those that are 60 years or older and low income.

And it allows them to go to farmer's market and redeem those coupons to make sure that they're getting fresh produce, which I've stood behind the lines before. They relish that and they always want to bargain on the price of whatever it is that they're buying. Our second oldest program is one that Sarah Hanson is here for.

Any questions that, because I will have to leave, is our California nutrition incentives program. This is one that's been built to Leverage Federal Dollars through the farm Bill, what is called the Gus Nutrition Incentives Program, we call our CNAPP.

We've been able to draw down over $35 million in just recent years of federal dollars to match what we're doing here in the state. This is a program that is dedicated to WIC recipients, SNAP recipients and senior Marcus senior farmers market recipients to be able to literally double what they're able to purchase with their EBT snap.

Well, CalFresh. I'm sorry, I'm still old fashioned and refer to as SNAP because the rest of the country does our CalFresh program. So it's a, it's a dollar for dollar match of the federal dollars that we're drawing down.

Which is why what you all have done in the Legislature to make sure that we have the State Dollars to be able to draw those dollars down to really double this up.

It is exciting to think about families going to farmers markets, which is where the vast majority of these are spent, but also community supported agriculture and to small corner stores, small businesses, because in many communities that's the closest thing they have to a supermarket.

And so it's like getting a 50% discount or going to the market to buy three things of fresh fruit and being able to add vegetables and maybe some fresh eggs to it too. So that's been a really, really important program.

I could go on and on and on about it, but I really respect your time and I want to give my colleagues time to talk. The healthy refrigeration grant program was a pilot program that started in 2019 for the first time. We did two pilot rounds on that $4.51,000,001 time and $9 million the second time.

But the request for that was, I'm looking for the number. We are oversubscribed on all of these programs. People will go, why the refrigeration program? But it was also about how do we reach corner stores and encourage them to offer healthy offerings and not just the packaged goods that may be ultra processed.

And the over subscription rate told us what that meant to them to be able to be offered, be able to offer more healthy food options in these corner stores. We've also been able to Fund food trucks and that kind of led to our mobile farmers market program.

But having this kind of infrastructure is the first step to being able to make fresh produce, fresh eggs, all those other kinds of things readily available. The program has reached over 1500 units, whether they're mobile trucks or the refrigeration units.

I could give you a whole list of statistics because we're also asking that they be energy efficient and climate smart units. So we're reducing greenhouse gas emissions by making this locally accessible in addition to having that kind of infrastructure. That's State of the art. It's increased the stores ability to offer more and that improves their profitability.

It obviously introduces people to more fresh produce and really translates into healthier eating habits. So we have long term health outcomes that are avoiding chronic diseases. The customers go to the store and they're willing to try new things which they also have learned at the farmer's market.

So all of our programs are helping small farmers because a lot of this is locally sourced. It's giving them more market options, it's increasing demand for their product. But it's also getting into families and teaching healthy lifestyle habits and improving health outcomes. We think about those multiple benefits with all of the programs that we do.

Some of our newer programs, one that we have out for grant funding right now is the Community Food Hubs program. This is legislation that passed last year. We'll have approximately $13 million to go out to really now that we have more local procurement options that are available, we're really seeing the need to do aggregation.

Food Hubs try to centralize some of those things that we could do for many, many small farmers, but more centralized, bringing efficiency to the system. And so the Community Food Hubs program, we anticipate at least 100 applications for this. It could be city or local government, nonprofit organization or others that will be eligible for this program.

The Farm to School program, I could spend all day talking about this one. And for all of you who have heard me, you know what the $85 million that's already been invested in this program is doing. How we're now into school systems that represent nearly 80% of our school age population. That's kindergarten through 12th grade.

But we also now are making it available to early child learning centers so that we're reaching from the youngest age as possible. How do we set those healthy lifestyle habits to help them have healthier outcomes over the, over the term of what they're doing?

We know that all of the farmers that are part of this, it's already proven in the evaluations that we're doing to bring them better options for markets, better certainty of what it is they should be growing for, what a school at that scale will be able to purchase.

So we see very long term benefits for this type of program if we can continue it going the way that it is. And the Community Food Hubs will bring some efficiency to the system on a local scale so that they can focus on growing what the schools need. Because we have regional navigators in this program.

They're doing the matchmaking for school nutrition directors to know what's growing in the area during what seasons and also helping the farmers know what they're looking for. It's really bringing the whole system together to work better. The last one I wanted to touch on is our Urban Ag program. Many people go, what's with Urban Ag?

Isn't that just a big community garden? There are ways on small plots of land for farmers to be successful because they're very targeted within that local community. And that also helps us all better understand where does food come from when it gets to my plate.

So there's multiple benefits, maybe not as tangible, but we have a number of new startup farms doing small scale. We hope that they can grow someday to be larger. They may be servicing a farmer's market. They may have their own csa.

The most important thing is that they're next door to where people are to really understand and appreciate what it is that we bring to this program. The Urban Agriculture program is a newer one. We've had almost $12 million go into that. We have systems builder block grants and some planning grants.

And the other part of this is for the practitioner. Maybe some of the small farms that are in city areas have been able to acquire some additional property in the area and they need washstands and other facilities to be part of the local food system. On Prop 4, I have to touch on that.

There are programs in that that will supplement what we've already started. There will be an additional $20 million for the urban agriculture grant program. We have $20 million for certified mobile market grant program.

These are oftentimes servicing many, many extremely small farms on that periphery of the city or the urban farms themselves and being able to go to where the neighborhoods are that don't have enough of a population for a standalone permanent farmers market. But going to different communities on different days. So that's a very important one.

And then for year round certified farmers markets and I know because of your last panel, you're going to have a lot of people who are going to be able to talk talk to you about more of the details on that.

And then I want to touch on the last program, which is a newer program we'll spend, if the budget is approved as proposed, we'll spend the initial $200,000 to stand up a new program which is a tribal food sovereignty program.

It's taken a while for us to reach into the tribes for the types of resiliency programs they're looking for. This will really help jump start that program and I'm really pleased. Under our farm to school program this past year, we've had several programs within tribal nations, and that's an exciting new area for us.

We'll spend our first year listening sessions to understand what they're looking for before we put out a competitive grant. I know I've more than used my time. I'd love to spend more time with you, but I think we'll do that over a nice California grown lunch someday. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Secretary Ross.

And I apologize. I have a meeting.

Understood? Understood.

I tried to talk fast, but I just want to say when it comes to collaboration, we couldn't do what we do without the really constant communication that we do here.

Our urban farming program was actually built with input from CalRecycle and others as we try to accomplish all the multiple benefits of climate friendly and meeting the needs of farmers and citizens.

To have the best healthy food that they can possibly get, which is what we grow in California. Thank you.

So, thank you so much, Secretary Ross, and thank you for collaborating with our agencies. I know you have someone here in your stead for questions, if Sarah wants to join, join up here too when we do questions, but I'll kick off to our other panelists to either Tess Thorman or Alexis Fernández Garcia, whoever wants to go next. Yeah. So if you could do five to eight minutes, that way we can have conversation. I think members do have things they want to talk about, too. So thank you. So go ahead, Tess.

Thank you. So my name is Tess Thorman. I'm a researcher at the nonpartisan nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California. Thank you for inviting me to provide testimony today. I'm going to talk about the prevalence of food insecurity in California, the impact of nutrition safety net programs on poverty as well as food insecurity, and some of the big picture challenges that make it harder for these programs to achieve their goals, and I'll do this based on PPIC's research and also my assessment of the broader research landscape.

Households are food-insecure, according to the USDA's definition, when they lack the resources to ensure that all members have enough to eat to support active and healthy lives, and this can involve stretches of time when some or all household members cut back on meals, shift to lower quality meals, or both, and it can last for different periods of time and happen at different periods of time.

Regardless, research finds that food insecurity experiences are harmful to health for people of all ages and particularly for children's health and development. 1.8 million households, or 13% of households in California, experience food insecurity at some point in 2023, and this is the most recent data.

More than half of that group, 9% of all households, had to make changes to their diets but didn't necessarily cut back on meals. The remaining 4% of all households, or 700,000 households, cut back on food, and this group experienced very low food security.

There's also an additional 1.1 million households, 10%, that were technically able to afford enough food but were only marginally food-secure because they couldn't afford balanced meals or they were worried that food would run out. Now, California's rate of food insecurity, that 13%, is pretty close to the national rate of about 14%.

Across states, it ranges from about 7 to 19%. California is kind of near the middle with some other large states, including New York, Florida, and Illinois. Food insecurity is up in California. It's still below where we were during the Great Recession when more than 15% of households were food-insecure.

The rate declined between 2011 and about 2017. It reached a low of around 10% that held steady through kind of the start of the pandemic. Monthly experiences of food insecurity may even have declined during 2021. This was a period when we had rising employment, rising wages, rising prices also, but we really also had this surge of temporary assistance that included CalFresh benefit increases, stimulus funding, expanded Unemployment Insurance, and advanced Child Tax Credit payments.

Then in 2022 and 2023, food insecurity rates in California ticked up as inflation continued and safety net expansions expired. As was mentioned before, households with children are more likely than those without to experience food insecurity. About one in six households with children experience food insecurity in California, compared to about one in ten of those without.

White and Asian households are less likely than Californians overall to experience food insecurity at about 7% compared to 18%, or nearly one in five of Latino, Black, and other households. Now, as we'll discuss today, more than 15 public programs in California aim to help individuals and families afford nutritious food, and research on the largest of these, CalFresh, School Meals, and WIC, indicates that they do reduce food insecurity.

They do so using different approaches, and they do so for different populations, some specifically focused on children. I mentioned before that we had a number of expansions during--these programs during the pandemic. Some of these have become permanent.

So, for example, after federal funding that expanded Free School Meals expired, California's Universal Meals Program began ensuring that two meals a day were free for all students. SUN Bucks, a Summer EBT program that helps cover meals for students when school is out, replaced Summer Pandemic EBT benefits.

However, the largest of the expansions during the pandemic was from federal funding to boost CalFresh benefits, and this expired at the start of 2023. Research indicated that those expanded benefits reduced food hardship during the pandemic and that food insecurity or food insufficiency increased nationwide when they expired.

Food insufficiency is a metric that's similar to food insecurity, just a little less detailed. Now, the data that USDA uses each year to measure food insecurity are not yet available past 2023. The best estimates on changes since then rely on other data. They generate different values, but they suggest that food insecurity in California has not changed substantially.

So the state's nutrition safety net also reduces poverty by making it easier to meet basic needs. Poverty and food insecurity overlap, but they're not fully aligned, so being unable to afford food is a manifestation of poverty, but some households that struggle with poverty may not experience food insecurity for a variety of reasons, including covering costs for food by not addressing other needs like housing or medical care.

PPIC and Stanford's California Poverty Measure calculates poverty once we include safety net resources as well as variation in the state's cost of living. According to this measure, about five million Californians, about 13.2% of the population, lived in poverty at the beginning of 2023, and without those big three nutrition programs, CalFresh, School Meals, and WIC, that group would have increased by 1.5 million. Without just CalFresh, it would have increased by 1.1 million.

I'll just note that some of those pandemic CalFresh benefit increases were in place at the time covered by those poverty estimates, so it's possible that CalFresh's impact on poverty is a little bit smaller than that currently because we know that those increases during the pandemic were substantial enough to lift a large number of people out of poverty.

In terms of some of those big picture challenges to safety net programs reducing food insecurity, one of the big ones is that California primarily implements national nutrition programs. So some of these decisions about support and eligibility, many of them happen at the federal level.

However, the state can make the most of federal funding by taking steps to maximize participation among eligible Californians. It can also supplement and/or seek modifications to programs, and it does. Program reach is really foundational. It reflects a lot of factors, including program awareness, experience of applying for and keeping benefits, and perceptions of participation, and California has improved the CalFresh participation rate really substantially over the last decade, although enrollment among likely eligible Californians remains lower than the national SNAP participation rate.

In addition to enrolling eligible Californians, however, we also have this challenge in California of food-insecure families not necessarily being eligible for the program or for receiving significant benefits.

So, for example, about 23% of Californians experiencing poverty and 34% of children in poverty live in households that include an undocumented resident. Undocumented household members are ineligible for CalFresh based on federal restrictions, although California plans to fund comparable benefits for some older undocumented adults through the California Food Assistance Program starting in 2027.

Another iteration of this challenge comes from the mismatch between California's high cost of living and incomes and nationwide eligibility thresholds and benefit amounts, which can mean that food-insecure Californians in high-cost parts of the state are either ineligible for assistance or they receive benefits that just don't last.

So means-tested programs have larger impacts in parts of California with relatively low costs. Inflation's also been top of mind in recent years. CalFresh has adjusted yearly to account for it. In kind, programs like School Meals can be a buffer against rising prices, but basic needs became really substantially more expensive during the pandemic.

So I just want to underscore that this remains a challenge. And then finally, I'll close with noting that federal funding is a cornerstone of California's nutrition safety net. So reductions to federal funding for nutrition programs would likely make it difficult to continue reducing poverty and food insecurity at current levels without new state investments. Thank you.

Thank you. Right on the eight-minute mark. We'll here from Department of Social Services now.

I'll see if I can do the same. So my name is Alexis Fernández Garcia, and I am the Deputy Director of the Family Engagement and Empowerment Division at the Department of Social Services. In this role, I oversee the administration of several food and nutrition programs, many of which were mentioned: CalFresh, the California Food Assistance Program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, SUN Bucks, and a number of federal and state emergency food programs.

Programs administered by the department complement the broader nutrition safety net in California, which include other programs such as WIC, overseen by the Department of Public Health, Medically Tailored Meals, overseen by the Department of Health Care Services, the Older Californians Nutrition Program, overseen by the Department of Aging, and the Universal School Meals Program, overseen by the Department of Education as well as those that Secretary Ross highlighted at the Department of Ag.

As you heard from our previous panelists, the state's continued investment in California's safety net, including nutrition assistance programs, but more broadly, health, housing, and other poverty-alleviating efforts like tax credits, are having a positive impact on the experience of food insecurity. That said, the nutrition safety net plays a key role.

The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is known as CalFresh, is largely regarded as one of the most effective tools to combat poverty and food insecurity, routinely reducing food insecurity by 20 to 30% with particularly significant impacts for Black households.

Historic investments in improving participation in programs such as CalFresh have contributed to these powerful anti-poverty and anti-hunger impacts. In the last decade, CalFresh participation by eligible individuals has increased by 20 percentage points. It is in combination that California state nutrition programs have the largest impact. I'm going to walk through an example.

An eligible school-aged child may receive CalFresh and free school meals via our Universal School Meals Program during the school year. During the summer, that same child may continue receiving CalFresh and SUN Bucks, our newest entitlement program. They might also pick up some free school meals at a local community site.

The child's younger sibling, in addition to also getting CalFresh, may get WIC benefits and attend a childcare participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program, where they will receive free meals and snacks. Taken together, these food resources free up other income for that family, allowing them to remain stably housed and meet other basic needs.

Let me dig into the topic of CalFresh in a bit more detail. It's California's version of SNAP. It provides between $23 and $91 per person in monthly benefits. A household benefit amount depends on various factors such as income, expenses, and household size.

Generally, households must have gross income below 200% of the federal poverty level, which is currently about $4,444 a month for a family of four, and net income after deductions below 100% of federal poverty, which is about $2,680 a month for a family of four to qualify.

SNAP eligibility rules, as has been mentioned, are established at the federal level with some limited flexibility for certain options at the state level. Let's talk a little bit about participation. So in terms of the caseload, we currently provide about $1.1 billion in federally funded food benefits to over 5.5 million Californians a month.

Historically, we've had the potential to reach more eligible Californians than we have served, but recent caseload trends do indicate that we are narrowing that participation gap. Last month, USDA released the newest federal participation rate for federal fiscal year 2022, and the rate has increased to 81%, up from 67% in federal fiscal year 2020.

That is a 20% increase in over two years. The USDA's methodology is lagged--as you can see, those numbers are a little bit older--and primarily are designed to produce a national level estimate using data only available to the Feds.

So we have historically produced our own measure, the Program Reach Index, which is available on our website to generate more timely estimates and we're continuing to refine that methodology to better understand how we can continue to improve participation. Regardless of the methodology you use, estimates are showing a large upward trend. So where is more work needed?

CalFresh participation gaps mirror those we have identified and are working to address in other safety net programs. So for example, the participation rate is higher for children than adults, although California has closed some of that gap in the last five years. Speakers of Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese have lower participation rates than the statewide average.

Californians who identify as Asian American have lower participation rates than the statewide average, and in general, the lower the household income, the higher the participation rate because the benefits are higher. So while there is also some variation by county, we have not observed any explicit patterns by region or geography. So what's next for CalFresh?

We're committed to maximizing our impact. Amongst all the programs we administer, we are focused on data-driven and client-centered decision-making as well as utilizing available federal and state policy options, raising awareness and outreach and education, working closely with our partners, including the Legislature and counties and community-based organizations to ensure excellent service delivery.

We, of course, could dive into some of that in more detail, but let me jump ahead to some highlights beyond CalFresh. The California Food Assistance Program, which was mentioned, or CFAP, provides state-funded food benefits for noncitizens who do not qualify for federally funded CalFresh.

In 2022, the governor and the Legislature worked together to pass a budget that included funding to expand CFAP to serve all Californians age 55 years of age or older, regardless of immigration status. This is scheduled to go into effect on October 1, 2027 and we are on track to implement. SUN Bucks, previously known as Summer EBT, provides food benefits to eligible school-age children during the summer months when they may not have access to school meals.

It works in tandem with CalFresh and Universal School Meals as well as other programs offered during the summer months. Each eligible child receives $120 for summer per summer on a preloaded EBT card and most do not have to apply. It's an automatic eligibility determination.

For this summer, nearly 500 million in SUN Bucks benefits have already been used by over 4.1 million children to buy groceries. We're currently awaiting federal approval for our summer 2025 plan. The Child and Adult Care Food Program provides reimbursement for nutritious meals and snacks serves to young children and adults. Over 20,000 organizations and daycare home providers across the state participate.

In addition to a focus on access and participation, we recently increased our commitment to Farm to CACFP, which aims to increase opportunities for providers to offer farm fresh and locally sourced foods integrated with nutrition education and Ag-based opportunities for young children and adults at the--for the over 700,000 participants that we serve each day.

The department also oversees a number of federal and state emergency assistance programs that are available to people who are not eligible for other benefits like CalFresh or SUN Bucks and who--or who are receiving those benefits and may still not be meeting their needs.

The Federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TFAP, provides administrative funds and USDA foods to a network of California food banks. The number of individuals and households served has remained consistently high. In 2024, we served over 2.2 million individuals and 760,000 households.

The state Cal Food Program provides TFAP providers with funding for the purchase, storage, and transportation of food grown or produced in California. This is an essential resource that supplements federal and private funding to ensure families have access to fresh foods.

In the 25-26 budget year, funding will return to the baseline amount of $8 million a year for that program. And just a couple more. The State Emergency Food Box Reserve Program provides emergency food during natural or human-made disasters. In a recent example, we provided one million dollars via an emergency agreement in response to the Los Angeles wildfires, and we're able to get 25,000 food boxes, water, and other supplies down to LA in less than a week.

The Tribal Nutrition Assistance Program promotes equitable and sustainable food sovereignty by increasing access to food and nutrition benefits through grants that we provide directly to tribal governments, and in 24-25, we'll have 48 tribes participating. So with that, I will conclude my remarks, and I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have.

All right, thank you so much to our first panel. I'm going to open the floor up for discussion from members, if you have any questions. Our Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry.

Thank you all for your participation. Really appreciate it. I have this black cloud hanging over my head right now wondering what, you know, you have some great figures and facts and when we're going to implement some of the projects, but it keeps thinking about what's going to happen with the federal government, and this is going to have to obviously hit all of your work.

And so I keep thinking about affordability, and how are we going to make it affordable if we can't get these children and families the food that they need on their tables? Doesn't matter what program it is because it touches every single one of them.

So I want to be here to help, and so when I look at the things--when I look at some of the numbers is participation, I don't want participation go down, and if we can continue to get people included, because I think some of our numbers are down in some of the counties that people aren't participating in some of these programs, I just want to figure out how can we do that.

And I know you don't have the magic ball in front of you, but it's one of those things that's really frustrating because it's got to be affordable, and we've got to help these families get back on their feet so we can bring economic development, make sure these children are healthy as well as our communities.

So I know it's a lot, and I appreciate--because I went through the whole report and I keep saying, 'oh, my gosh, it's all about access.' And if families don't have access to the food, I do appreciate what Ms. Ross said is because we're trying to grow more food and we do refrigeration, all those things are important, but when I hear my food banks just got hit big-time yesterday, you know, so I guess it's just a comment.

I mean, I will just acknowledge that there is a lot of uncertainty related to changes at the federal level, and so for us, we are committed to tracking those closely and, of course, evaluating each of those proposals and changes and understanding the impact in the State of California to the extent we can to continue maximizing access.

I think there are, you know, things that we can do to ensure that people are aware of the changes, to continue conducting outreach, and as a state, the investments we've made to offer benefits to those who may not be eligible or may not feel comfortable participating in those federal programs should also help.

I think the outreach is really important because I remember a time that when we were going through Covid and a lot of people were participating and then they kind of backed off or difficulty in filling out the applications or where it goes and I wish there was an easier way to do that so we don't have to put that burden on families. So, yeah.

Just to build upon what our colleague is saying, so, of course a lot of the eligibility requirements are dictated by the federal government when it comes to SNAP or CalFresh, but is there anything in California in our power to simplify the process and reduce bureaucratic obstacles?

Because renewal--as we're talking about--the renewal and the application process is more stringent than, say, other assistance programs. So is there something in our house--in our state role, that we can simplify and make it more straightforward for applicants?

So you are right. For programs like CalFresh, which are the largest of the programs I spoke about that reach the most Californians, there are a number of federal rules that are maintained at the national level and that the state does not have the power to control.

We have taken a number of options in the State of California to the extent that they're available, and we, we focus on ensuring that the options we take--not expand eligibility--ensure that eligible people are able to access benefits under those options and that they do focus on maximizing participation.

So things like the Elderly Simplified Application Project for older adults, that is an option that we've taken to streamline some of the eligibility requirements as an example, extending the period for which you're determined eligible to three years, eliminating reports during that period so that older adults are able to maintain their benefits for longer periods of time.

Another example is a waiver of the time limit on receiving benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents. That is a federal term based on economic conditions in the state.

So to the extent that there are policy options available that maximize participation and access, we have taken those, and then along with our partners at the county level, do have a focus on customer service and delivery and the use of technology to improve self-service options and ensure that every doorway, whether it's in-person, on the phone, or online, is available to our clients. Certainly we could make strides in continuing to streamline that, but it has been a focus of the department and our partners.

Absolutely. Thank you. Assembly Member Celeste Rodriguez.

Yes, thank you so much for being here in your presentations. My two questions actually are in the same vein of accessibility. Specifically, more Californians who speak English are enrolling and there's been studies about how--and you even mentioned it--like Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog aren't.

So my first question is about closing that gap and what we have left to do in ways that we can be supportive, and my second question is about like call centers. Recently, it was reported that a lot of college students trying to access CalFresh--because they need to be able to afford groceries--are facing long waits and challenges with call centers, especially for required appointments like the interview. So what's being done for more timely and easier access when it comes to like customer service?

Give me one second. Okay, Sure. I answer each component. So in terms of the participation challenges we see amongst non English speakers, that is something that we're tracking closely. I shared some of the highlights in the data.

We've been refining the program Reach Index methodology that I mentioned in my remarks to be able to do more of that data driven analysis of who, who exactly is participating and who is not, to the extent we can know it. Where are they located and how can we use that data to drive different strategies.

For example, we're looking at doing more in Reach. We serve many Californians and other programs such as Medi Cal, that is a population that is known to us.

We can try to estimate who might be eligible for CalFresh, reach out to them in target as ways and try to encourage them to apply, possibly, you know, provide information about what benefits they might be eligible for.

In terms of our outreach program, we have a formal network of CBOs across the state and are trying to share that data to also target those efforts and ensure that our media campaigns are in non English languages, that they're delivered in targeted areas.

During our last campaign, we ran a series of focus groups with Vietnamese speakers, Spanish speakers, really trying to target messages to those populations using the data that is available to us. That is the type of work that we're doing based on what we know about who we are not serving as well as we should be.

In terms of customer service, Call centers are definitely growing in terms of their use at the local level. It is, you know, one of the key doorways to ensuring access in addition to in person and online service. We have, as we've come out of the pandemic, struggled with volume. We are serving more people than ever before.

And many of our county partners are also struggling with maintaining workforce. And so given those challenges, our county partners are focused on call center access, getting staff, you know, dedicated to ensuring that we can answer the phone on time or timely, complete different tasks during that first point of contact so you're not having to call us back.

So it is an area where we continue to work with our county partners, continue to provide them technical assistance. We have a dedicated team at the department who does that. And then we pair that technical assistance with some monitoring just to make sure that we're aware of what's happening locally.

All right, Chair Soria.

Thank you. I had a couple questions. One, going back to some of the remarks that Secretary Ross made. Wanted to see if I forget your name.

Sarah Henry.

Oh, Sarah, if you could maybe answer this. I wanted to see. I Know, she outlined all the wonderful programs that are based out of CDFA. Wanted to know if you guys, out of all those that you have, which ones you guys have measured that have had the biggest impact on food insecurity.

Just curious, in terms of the roi, because I think that that's important. As we're thinking about, again, we have a struggling budget, and so what are things that we should be investing more because we're getting a greater ROI out of it.

Thank you for that question. I think our California Nutrition Incentive Program. Right. That program that stretches primarily CalFresh Dollars, but also WIC and Farmers Market Nutrition Incentive Program or Farmer's Market Program Dollars, we really see. We saw, you know, again in the pandemic when there was this huge need. The numbers just jumped.

We had to shift program funds and apply. We were able to apply for several $6 million additional from the Federal Government to try to meet some of that needed. But that one is always. We always want more people participating than we have funding for.

There's always more markets that want to come on board and more stores that see this need in their community. We've been trying to expand slowly because we have limited funding, but that one is really, we hear time and time again from participants how important it is to be able to stretch their food dollars.

And we've also seen that through both state and federal evaluations on food security impacts as well as nutrition. So we're not only seeing it reduce hunger, but we're seeing people eat healthier and particularly try new fruits and vegetables that they haven't tried before, which is something that I always love about the program, too.

And so we're seeing that impact as well as the impact on the local economy. It does have an economic multiplier of 3, which is pretty high. The snap one is 1.54 now, I think. And because this is really focused on that local community, those local farmers, it's a really great economic investment as well.

And are you guys looking at other opportunities to kind of continue working in collaboration with the other agencies to see how best to continue to tackle food insecurity?

Yes. I mean, so we're very grateful, as Secretary Ross mentioned, to be able to work with our sister state agencies. None of these programs, CNA, for example, isn't possible without CalFresh. It piggybacks off of all of that. We don't have to worry about enrolling because the Department of Social Service has already done that.

So it's very easy for somebody to participate in that program right now. We're also working with our partners at the Department of Public Health around WIC to try to expand as the WIC farmers Market Nutrition program goes electronic, working with them, providing incentives as well as technical assistance to help more shoppers or farmers.

Same with our seniors working. We have some grants out for technical assistance right now with senior centers bringing seniors to the farmers markets, teaching them how to use these benefits, particularly as they go electronic and trying to sort of increase that partnership.

Same with our farm to school program, working with our partners at the Department of Education on almost a weekly basis there with that one.

Thank you for that, Sarah. Then I just have two other questions for the Department of Social Services. One I'm very interested in trying to figure out obviously the enrollment numbers for Spanish speakers and the low participation.

Like what else can we do to obviously we know that folks are food insecure and so like what else can we be doing? Or are there certain investments that are happening with like the promotoras that are helping? Like I'm just wondering how else could we ensure that the families that are struggling the most. So that's one question.

And the second question that I have also, obviously food prices have skyrocketed, you know, in the last few years. What happens in terms of the amount of money that folks are getting? Is it the same? Because if it's the same, that means that they're just getting less. And so, you know, they're becoming more, I guess, food insecure.

I imagine if, you know, for example, eggs, right. The prices went up so high. So if families are using their CalFresh benefits to purchase eggs, then that means they're going to have to go without something. So what are we doing to kind of adjust for inflation or for the increase in prices?

We know that with the tariffs and what some of the federal actions, it's going to continue to perpetuate the cost of food. So I'm just curious in terms of the agency, what is the plan to try to mitigate some of that for our families?

So let me start with the question about food prices and the benefit amounts. So snap benefit amounts are set at the federal level. Coming out of the pandemic, there was a significant change to the benefit allotment based on a revision of the thrifty food plan that was undertaken by usda.

And so we saw a large increase in benefits coming out of the pandemic and I believe it was around 2020, remember the year, and that increased benefits quite significantly for families from there. Benefits are adjusted every year based on inflation. And so that is a significant and necessary component to the federal methodology that should be preserved.

There have been some conversations at the federal level about changing the thrifty food plan and the way that benefits are set.

And I would just speak to the importance of being able to move those benefits amounts each year with inflation to keep up with the cost of that low price food basket as part of the thrifty food plan.

When it comes to participation, I do want to make sure we're all on the same page that participation is increasing for all groups across the state and there are still more gains that need to be made for non English speakers and other kind of sub populations that we're focusing on. Right.

In terms of what we can do, we saw those very large gains during the pandemic, not just because of the increased need that they're experiencing and people became familiar with the benefit, but because of the additional benefits that flowed from the Federal Government. And no surprise, when benefits are higher, people are much more likely to participate. Right.

The cost benefit analysis for a family of applying and maintaining benefits changes when the benefit amount is higher. So higher benefits do make a difference in people's calculus and their likelihood for participation as well.

We were able to launch, with significant ARPA funds coming out of the pandemic as well, really targeted media and education campaigns with the data based research.

So that's how we were able to run the focus groups and the targeted messages for non English speakers that we ran in ethnic media in certain communities and other communities where we were running other messages, other kind of targeted messages that resonated with people.

And so that type of large scale education campaign that allows for very tailored and customized messages and you know, even visuals and ads running in different local communities does seem to make a difference. That's, you know, all happening at that time that we saw these large gains in participation.

I just wanted to also revisit our CDFA Representative, you said something. There's a program that has a 3x return on investment. What was that program again?

The California Nutrition Incentive Program.

The California Nutrition Incentive Program. And how much money is allotted for that in the current budget year that we're living in?

In this current budget year. So we are working on. We had a $35 million allocation that was frozen and then unfrozen. So we're have that. Plus right now we're operating under a almost $13 million federal grant as well. Because we do, when we have state funds, we're allowed to apply for federal matching funds.

We need a dollar of non state funds to apply for those federal Funds.

And is it in the proposed budget right now by the Administration as well?

It is not. Although our funding will carry us home through another year. We tend to operate like two years in advance because the state budget and the federal program are completely misaligned time wise. So we have to sort of plan two years out. But so this funding will.

Well, we were planning to apply for federal funding right now. Actually there was an application that was out that is now currently under review. If that does come back out, we should be funded through the end of 2026, if it does, or 2027.

And if it does not, then we will run out of funding for that about eight months earlier.

Okay, makes sense. Well, that might be something for us to revisit as well because. And you're saying it's a 3x ROI because of the impact on the local small farmers. Is that what you care for? Yeah.

So the economic multiplier has been estimated to be that high because partly it's actually it's bringing people to the farmers markets where they're spending more money and in that community and then it's going directly into the hands of those farmers.

Yeah. Well, that's also a question I did want to ask is in working with all these programs I know CDSS mentioned, there is one program, I don't remember all the acronyms at this point, but there's one program that did prioritize local California grown food.

Now we know CalFresh in General has at least a 1.5x return on investment, but of course consumers are spending money what's available in the grocery stores and that could be, that could still mean fruits from South America or Asia even or whatever, what have you.

And I think it's so important, especially given the context we're in here, that we want to help our local agriculture and farmers, at least the United States in many ways. Are there other programs that either CDSS or CDFA administers in the food world that are tailored towards securing consumers towards consuming California grown or local source food?

So again, the nutrition incentive program for us is the largest one because it can only be used for California grown. Also Secretary Ross mentioned our Healthy Refrigeration grant program. So that's to be used for California grown foods.

So the refrigerators that are going into these corner stores are sourcing that food directly and then sort of the school food side of it. Right. Our farm to school program is very much focused on California grown, very local.

And so you see that as well as we're hoping to increase the infrastructure for that through our Community Food Hubs grant programs, right?

Absolutely. Well, I mean I was also going to ask about because we have the food desert issue where there are many rural and low income metro areas that are food deserts effectively.

So do you, do you have any estimate from CDFA if we were to scale up programs like the Community Food Hub that we'd be able to effectively eliminate or really seriously mitigate these food desert problems if we scaled up.

I know the secretary is talking about how it's super oversubscribed but if you were to you see what the need is out there and obviously there's only so much we can do.

If we were to fund a specific amount for this kind of infrastructure, what do you think that would take for us to be able to eliminate food deserts?

That's a very complicated question. I think that's a very multi pronged approach. So I think something like the Healthy Refrigeration Grant program that's working with existing infrastructure. So you have those corner stores that are already there. They're just maybe not able to offer healthy foods.

They're getting refrigerators that are paid for by PepsiCo and so they have to have those products there. We're providing a refrigerator from the state Secretary Ross mentioned was oversubscribed. We had $61 million in requests for 9 million of funding and we get calls almost every week asking if there's more funding for the program.

And it's made such a big difference for the communities that have had it. But we definitely there are a lot more that need it. So there's sort of that approach.

There's also she mentioned we do work through both the Healthy Refrigeration and the nutrition Incentive program with mobile markets trying to bring that fresh, usually right from a farmer's market produce to communities that might not be able to support a full farmer's market. But the market can.

The sort of the mobile market can stop say at a school pickup time where people can use their CalFresh or the WIC benefits. Actually not. Well, they're working on the WIC benefits But using the CalFresh benefits there, getting that CNIP incentive and being able to buy that produce there or low income senior housing.

I know Andy Najeris is going to be speaking in a little bit. His organization operates a mobile market that is able to do that really reaching a lot of low income seniors. And so I think some of those multi pronged approaches are really sort of what you need there. I don't have Necessarily A.

But it's sort of working both with I think existing infrastructure as well as really trying to bring some of that new stuff. We do have Some funding from Prop 4 to increase the mobile market. Absolutely.

Well, I think as. As the Legislature sets out to eliminate food insecurity and food deserts it is helpful to know because these are some of these helpful data points or if they're oversubscribed means there's a real need out there and at least we have some data points to build out infrastructure. Just one last question.

I'll just turn over to my community Members if they have any other questions before we end this panel. But I want to ask CDSS just real quick. You had mentioned about the CFAP program which was basically our food assistance program for non citizens 1555 plus and older.

That money was fully or that program was fully funded in the previous budget years to be launched. No. To be launched in 2027 or. Yeah. What's the funding situation for this program that's supposed to be launched in October 2027.

So we are currently on track to implement beginning October 12027. We have funding set aside for the related system automation as well as outreach and community education. But the funding for the benefits themselves will not be available until the budget cycle that includes October 12027. So what is that? 27-28.

So just to be clear, in the previous budget years, which budget year was this that we put the the money to set up the program itself?

24. 25. 24.

So just in the last budget cycle we put the money to set up the program but the money for the benefits themselves has yet to materialize?

Correct.

Okay. Okay, sounds good. Well that sounds like a thing we should talk about in the budget process. I'll see if Rodriguez, you have any followers or offer.

There is a budget letter to ensure that we fulfill this commitment for 55 + and go further and ensure everyone who needs food access can have it. So I welcome more signers onto this budget letter.

Zero, you have a budget letter right now on. Okay, very good. Good. And anything else though? No. Okay.

Chair, Sorry, just one last question. I know obviously there's also a big interest in seeing more organic food being or organics being harvested. And you know, like today earlier in our Committee we, we talked about continuing some of these certified organic programs that we have through cdfa.

I'm just wondering, do any of the benefits that are provided for like through CalFresh take that into account? Because I know families and I know my family for sure when we're growing up, you. You would choose the cheapest because you get more.

So are there any conversations happening around that for folks that you know want to get those healthier options but you know they're choosing to go for the cheaper option?

So you could certainly purchase organic if that is your choice. As a CalFresh recipient, when I mentioned the federal formula that I called the Thrifty Food Plan, that actually assumes a very low cost, quote unquote basket of foods including some household preparation. So for example, it assumes you buy raw beans versus canned beans.

And so it is a very low budget version of what it would take for a family to meet their entire food needs. And so that would need to be revised at the federal level basically into another category of food purchasing assumptions about what food will be purchased by a SNAP household.

Any other questions or comments from community Members? If not, I want to thank our first panelists so much for your presentations and thoughtful discussion and I'm going to invite the second panel about food production to come up. So we're going to do our second panel.

We have three panelists this well on food production systems to give us some insight onto the production of food. But same guidelines here where we want to ask our presenters do five to eight minutes range so that we can have another fruitful discussion. And I'm going to let whoever wants to go first between our panelists.

Whoever wants to go first can go first. So you're a brave role model. Who wants to go first?

Sure, I'll go first. All right. Sure, why not? First of all, good afternoon and thank you very much for the invitation to represent the farmer's perspective in this discussion on food insecurity. My name is Veronica Maceriego Sanastasio and I am a farmer in Pescadero in San Mateo county on the Central Coast.

I grow a wide variety of organic vegetables and fruits and manage just over 100 acres of land. I also sit on the Small and Medium Scale Producer Advisory Committee to the cdfa.

Seven years ago I co founded my farm Brisa Ranch together with my two farm partners, Cristobal Cruz Hernandez and Cole Masarigo San Anastacio out of a vision to marry the principles of organic agriculture and community oriented marketing strategies focusing on selling to businesses and institutions such as grocery stores and school districts.

At Brisa Ranch we are guided by philosophy that farming is more than a means to produce food. It is a deeply reciprocal relationship between people and the land. Our mission is to ensure that sustainably produced, nutrient rich food reaches people from all walks of life, bridging gaps in equity while caring for the environment.

To this end, we have also been leading efforts to start and pilot our own Food Hub coast side Local Food Hub, a farmer led food hub which aggregates product from small and medium scale farms on the central coast which Secretary Ross spoke about and sell into businesses and institutions that want to source locally.

The Food Hub model shortens a long and opaque food value chain, increasing transparency for both eaters and and producers, preserving the nutritional quality of the food and increasing the food dollar share for the farmer and her community.

Thanks to Farms Together, a federally funded program through the USDA Local Food Purchasing Assistance Program, we have been able to test this concept and collectively sell our produce directly to the SF Marin Food bank and Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.

For the last year, forming a reciprocal partnership with these food banks Together, we now coordinate crop plans based on needs they see in the community. As part of a special pilot called the Boundless Project, this year, farmers in our network will grow specialty Chinese broccoli, bok choy, cilantro and collard greens for the five Bay Area food banks.

At our farm we grow this very beautiful large squash called the Chilacayote squash that's very commonly eaten in Mexico where my farming partner is from, and in Guatemala where my father is from and one of the food bank sourced this squash and shared with us that the families were very excited and shared recipes and food memories.

In short, our farms are well equipped to grow food for the diverse communities represented in our state because we are also part of those communities. The impact of working with food banks and organizing into the food hub on our farms has been palpable.

Access to these sorts of institutional markets, paying a fair price that goes directly to the farmer as opposed to distributors, affords us the ability to focus on what we do best tending to our farms. One of the farms we work with, Alfa Omega Organic Farm, was able to lease additional acreage to increase their production.

Another farm that had been thinking about exiting farming altogether is now enthusiastic about continuing to grow his business. Considering that that we are losing small farms at a rate of four a day, this is no small success.

Investing in a resilient network of regional serving producers proved especially important during climate related natural disasters I experienced during the pandemic. Our farm was also directly affected by the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire.

Local farmers were able to coordinate with food banks and food preparers to make food available to evacuees at a time that the global food supply chains were leaving shelves empty.

Programs like the CDFA Farm to School grant and the Farm to Community Food Hub grants which were mentioned earlier, are exactly the sort of investment we need to resource the demand side and the supply side, in this case our farms with necessary equipment, infrastructure and connections to meet the needs in our regions.

Despite these successes and the positive impact of these trials, there is still more to be done. For one, the Farms Together program is federally funded and has already been stopped and restarted this month and future funding fully cut, virtually killing this program.

Building relationships New markets and crop planning take time and need long term investments A state version of farms together that can solidify this link between addressing hunger and supporting small and medium scale family farms would go a long way in alleviating hunger while simultaneously supporting small and growing family farm businesses that are often boxed out of these markets but make the most sense to be serving these communities.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest ironies I have witnessed while farming is the hungry farmer. They are predatory distribution companies that take advantage of small farmers, often paying them well below market price because the farmer has no other choice but but to be a price taker. As farmers, we are dealing with a widespread affordability crisis.

The cost of everything from housing to land to cardboard boxes has increased our cost of production and therefore making a living as a farmer has become increasingly untenable. One of the biggest challenges I have as a farmer is land tenure.

Although I have access to land with a year to year lease, I have no security on any of the properties where I farm. We need to make it easier and more affordable for practicing farmers to buy land.

Otherwise, we are condemning our rural communities to transient and uncommitted tenants that will not make the necessary investments to build thriving businesses and communities. In many ways, a lot of the challenges stem from a root cause consolidation.

The consolidation of food businesses, of distributors, of non operating landowners have made us reliant on few actors that benefit from a weakened agricultural system that depend on their products, services and or land. This has led to inflationary pressure that is reflected not only on the price of eggs, but most of the key ingredients of our food system.

If we let this consolidation persist and we do not invest in cultivating resilient regional and local food systems that take care of our natural resources and feed our communities, we must resign ourselves to persistent hunger and decaying and a decaying agricultural economy.

I urge you all to consider how you can shift your focus to policies that promote farms and ranches like mine that are growing food for our community instead of ignoring us. Because we do not necessarily align ourselves with a system that is failing our communities and farm businesses.

The limited state dollars we are spending on hunger can at the very same time support how we mitigate the effects of climate change, stabilize a consolidation weakened food system, infuse money into our rural communities and improve health outcomes with a food as medicine framework. All by supporting small farmers that care and live in the communities we feed. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Tim. If you want to go next.

Thank you so much, Veronica. That really opened up the space. I'd like to thank you all Members of the Human Services and Agricultural Committee for having the foresight to have this joint session. My name is Tim Galarneau.

I work with the UC Center for Agroecology where I serve as a Food Systems Program Manager, engaging regional, statewide and national partnerships to advance a more resilient and agroecological food system.

I also serve as the Center's lead for a 14 county region of the Southwest Regional Food Business center from Ventura to Mendocino and sit on the Center Management Team and Leadership Council as well as lead our Technical assistance workgroup serving Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah.

I'm here today alongside other food and farming colleagues to honor the tremendous intergenerational and skillful commitment of our land and farming stewards alongside Food Access and Security partners that are active leaders in cultivating a vision to uplift, connect and nourish Californians.

This may in fact be the first joint session of this Assembly to bring the crucial intersection of food and farm production and community, food security and well being together. And I want to again extend my appreciation for your foresight and interest in doing so today.

And if the slides are up on the next slide with the time I have, I'd like to provide an overview of the USDA Southwest Regional Food Business Center, highlight some of the partnerships and efforts to date and then begin to lift the Southwest Food Regional Food business center partners NGOs, UCANR and CDFA's promising activities that are advancing farm to market success for our small and underinvested producers and enterprises.

And before wrapping up, I'd also like to bridge into California Higher Education Student Food Security with my other hat and roll in the University of California.

I co direct the education and training work of the UC Essential Needs Consortium with the Center for Economic justice in Action and I also serve in the California Higher Education Basic Needs Alliance.

I've been with our Basic Needs Village since the get go in 2014, so I'll briefly lift how we're working to bridge student food security and success in these times as well. Next slide.

The Southwest Food Business Center, which launched in spring of 2023, is led by UC AG and Natural Resources as a $35,000,000, 5 Year Partnership Program program supporting Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah, intersecting State Departments of Food and Ag with University Extension and community based organizations.

The Southwest Food Business Center operates alongside 11 other regional food business centers totaling 420 million invested into supporting the market development of our small, underinvested and socially disadvantaged producers and enterprises including tribal and border region communities designated as Colonias.

This program also coincides with one time State coordinated funding of resilient food system infrastructure funds known as RFSI that provide an additional 21.5 million to California supporting 117 projects. The food Business center focuses on Harding Institutional and Community based Producer engaged partnerships to advance technical assistance, coordination and capacity building.

Next slide the unique systems approach to connecting government, University and industry has over the last year and a half resulted in supporting over 1500 small and underinvested farmers and enterprises with technical assistance, establishing 321 new market based partnerships and launched 63 new small food and farm businesses with the Food Business Center.

It hosts quarterly online webinars, lifting practices and resources for all affiliates alongside sub region workshops, one on one support and strategic convenings. The Food Business Center has 4.1 million to release in competitive and non competitive direct awards.

Arizona, Nevada and Utah have launched their Business Builder Competitive Awards and here in California this winter we've launched our non competitive Business Builder Award program led by partner organizations that provide cohort and one by one business training programs with direct awards to participating farms and enterprises and these non competitive programs are being led by Kitchen Table Advisors, California FarmLink, Diaspora Groceries, Fresno State University, North State Planning and Development Collective and the Center for agroecology.

In fall 2025, California anticipates releasing an additional 1 million in competitive small farm and enterprise grants. Next slide Within California we have 26 project partners with six sub region leads that are bolded in the next slide, which you could move on to if you'd like.

It's the nexus of partnerships from our communities to our institutions that we're tracking and learning how to better serve underinvested producers and enterprises. Bottom line, all small farms and businesses are hanging on a thread in their communities with shifting market landscapes, increased lease and business expenses, all the while trying to grow and feed people.

Projects like the Food Business Center and the ones I'll highlight below create anchors that form a web to provide support and investment in a critical time for our food producers.

I've spoken with many small BIPOC and underinvested farmers this year around the state and they need market access and opportunities to sell in their regions in ways that the wholesale marketplace has been difficult to navigate without investment in supplemental technical assistance and policies that value their contribution in the State of agriculture.

Next slide so, as noted above, relationships and weaving them in this time are critical to strengthening our food system. The ability to integrate UC, anr, Cooperative Extension, UC SERAP and Small Farm Advisors with community organizations and partners is a crucial element in building resilience and rapid response to needs in our food and farming communities.

Further, we've expanded our Ag Experiment Station land grant campuses to build upon Davis, Berkeley and Riverside with UC Santa Cruz and UC Merced. This strategic expansion reflects broader needs and opportunities to harness the UC for our state and food and ag needs.

Speaking of the state, I have to acknowledge the incredible team under Secretary Karen Ross in the Department of Food and Agriculture while holding monthly meetings across the Office of Farm to Fork and Tia Rittenhouse and Carmen Carusko with the Farmer Equity Office and Lauren McCauley with RFSI.

Through the Food Business Center we want to spotlight a few key areas for farmers and institutions really feeding our communities and this will underline a lot of what's been shared by some of our former presenters.

The California Farm to school program releasing 85 million and providing 195 farm to school incubator projects across the state connecting districts and small farms and food hubs with Nick Anasich and his bidirectional team serving farm to market and district to market partnerships and and the investment of ongoing Universal School meals in California and having CDFA support.

Connecting agriculture to these feeding programs is a monumental investment in the well being of our children and farmers and we need to continue to see that take place with California food hubs. The RFP that's out with over 13 million noted supporting small Farmer engaged aggregation and distribution.

Just earlier this month we held a convening of 34 food hubs and 100 stakeholders at UC Santa Cruz. Veronica was there and is now following up with our chef with direct sourcing. But to create these relationships in marketplace we need to bring people together and this is the time to do it more than ever.

There's three additional programs and points I'd like to lift that are underway. One includes the University wide project at CO Direct working with small farm and enterprises across all 10 campuses and six health centers we operate. Last year we shifted 32 million in buying local, organic, regenerative and sustained sustainable sourcing.

We're currently working on system wide and site level contracts and RFPs to ensure pathways for our small producers and enterprises. Built on President Drake's policy goals of increasing campus and health center sourcing across the University of California with campuses at 25% and our health centers at 30% by 2030.

We also are working on the other side of the coin with equitable sourcing with a mandate of 25% of all UC supply chains sourcing from socially disadvantaged and small enterprises by 2030 with pilot scale efforts.

Also with CalAim with California Advancing and Innovating Medi Cal the Food is Medicine Work Underway with over 14 approved projects is just the start of the cuff. Our UC health systems serve over 6.4 million in and outpatient residents a year.

Just thinking of how to connect with our food hubs and farmers to nourish our communities through health centers would be a promising state investment as well.

And before transitioning my last comments, I want to acknowledge the current USD Local Food Purchase Assistance Program led by a California Association of Food Banks, CAF and Fresh Approach with their Farms Together initiative. This program has supported 483 under invested producers in supplying our food banks and emergency distribution sites with healthy fresh food.

While the third installment of LFPA has been taken off the table by this current Administration, the remaining funds will Support communities through 26 with fresh approach and partners looking to farm to institution market channels for transitioning out of that program, the Intersections with Health higher ed and k12 is needed more than ever.

We'll be hosting a statewide Farmed institution summit on April 8th at UC Santa Cruz, building in these conversations and deepening our connections to our small producers. And lastly, with the current Federal Administration pauses and review programs like RFSI in review at this time, the current Federal Administration continues to determine what programs will persist.

It's essential our state government and leadership maintain and expand commitments to strengthen our regional food and farming systems. Programs that the state can support to invest further in farm to institution pathways will be well aligned with existing programs.

Also, with Prop 4 bond money coming forward, I think that'll be an interesting intersection for maybe further questions and follow up with Secretary Ross and partners. And next slide so intersections with California Food Security.

I just want to close my comments and acknowledge this basic village We've established incredible success in collaborations with many of you and your colleagues to address food insecurity levels at double, triple and at times can quadruple on specific campuses in the state.

You've seen on your slides some of the legislative bills we've worked on and that includes building county liaisons and all county letters for our county support teams with our segments. We're also working on CalFresh in monumental ways and we've just scratched the surface.

In the first 10 years of our work with CalFresh we've brought in over 10, 4 billion, excuse me, in higher ed CalFresh uptake and use in our communities and circulating that in the California economy and that's less than 15% of our eligible populations.

So I think there's great work ahead to build on that and there's great concerns with some of the snap cuts ahead too. So our higher ed communities are really concerned. And while you can see each segment has success in scaling some of the holistic basic needs and security work over the last seven to 10 years.

Tim, if I could ask you to wrap it up?

Yeah, I just want to wrap up to supporting the Cal Food program. So we have 148 food pantries in all the higher ed segments in the UC, CSU and CCC and those partnerships are essential. And I think Becky Silva will be speaking in the next panel. More on it.

I was just with all of our basic needs directors in Irvine for the last two days across the system and they just wanted to pass their love and appreciation on for the support you've given them and the continued work with our student associations as well. So with that, thank you. Thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to Steve.

Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for the invitation. My name is Steve Brazeel. I'm the founder of a company called Sunterra Produce. I'm originally from Brawley, California. My father was a farm labor contractor. So I too have experience working alongside migrant labor, picking fruits and vegetables and did that for many of my younger years.

And I knew I wanted to be in agriculture. I knew also that I didn't necessarily want to be in the harvesting side of the game. So I went off to school and studied agriculture and wanted to get into the sales and marketing and distribution of those crops.

And I was able to do that and worked for a couple of very large California based distributors early in my career before launching Sunterra in 2000.

And what Sunterra does is we partner with generally multi generational family farms on the smaller side, aggregate their volume as such, and try to market it to large retailers, processors, food service distributors, wholesale distributors, really, in attempt to keep these small farmers going, as we know the challenges that are facing our industry, especially here in California.

And so that business was very, very, it was good to us and our family and, you know, we're able to build a good business over that time. And, and all that changed when the pandemic hit our company and our industry was rocked.

70% of the leafy green vegetables that we grow down in the beautiful desert in Imperial county are destined for those markets that were impacted during the pandemic. So schools, restaurants, hotels, conventions, travel. And so conversely, we began plowing under 50 to 70% of our crops that we had grown. And this was in early 2020.

And we really didn't know what we were going to do. We were trying to figure out if we could keep our people. We weren't harvesting very much, so we were laying off workers. Times were really challenging. And the United States Department of Agriculture during that time launched a program called the Farmers to families food Box program.

A lot of you might remember during the pandemic, those news reports or videos of these miles long lines of cars with the trunk open and people putting a box of fresh food in the back during the early stages of the pandemic. And so that was a program that was designed by usda.

So we had one week to come up with a proposal, as did everybody else. It was a very fast moving program.

We were able to reach out to several food banks in California, mainly in Southern California and Central California, and forge relationships with them and let the USDA know that we would be able to source these awesome fresh fruits and vegetables and get them to these food banks in a timely manner with high quality produce.

And we were fortunate enough to be chosen as one of the contractors to provide that benefit and that service. And so during the course of that program, we were able to partner with fresh fruit and vegetable growers throughout the State of California whose markets were similarly disrupted.

Bring all those to our facility in Brawley, California and pack those into awesome variety fresh fruit and vegetable boxes and get those out to food banks, faith based charities, community based organizations, all on behalf of the usda.

And one of the things I'll always say about that program, and I think the lasting impact for me and for a lot of the people that I know that have been involved in the program, is it forced us, it forced industry into the room with these nonprofits and food banks, and they really hadn't had that connectivity before.

And so as we started building these relationships in these communities, really learning what a food bank does, the role that they play and the critical role that they provide to their pantry partners, really started getting an understanding of how it works. And it changed the way we thought about the food we produced.

Agriculture is a very difficult business economically, very challenging, very low margin weather challenges. There's all sorts of curve balls that can come your way. And you know, it's just one of those things that's that it's a difficult living. And so, you know, as we started partnering with these food banks, a beautiful thing started happening.

We started going to the events, we started going to the distributions, and we started seeing, seeing the impact that a box of healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables had on an individual, the look on their face when we would give them that box of joy, of excitement, of relief, of just a myriad of emotions that people had and its connectivity with food and the healthy food that we grow here in California.

And so that program lasted for a year. We were able to partner with 150 different nonprofits during that first year of that program, deliver close to to 1.5 million boxes to food banks throughout California and the West Coast. And then after one year, that program ended and the funding dried up. Then something beautiful happened.

We were able to sit down with numerous food banks in California and the California Association of Food Banks, who's become a great partner with us.

And we sat down and tried to figure out how we could source fresh fruits and vegetables and get them to a food bank in an affordable, efficient manner that allowed for them to utilize their funding on high quality fresh fruits and vegetables, just like they do for all kinds of other foodstuffs.

And because of what we'd learned during the course of the year of that program, of how to source produce, how to find hard to sell produce, how to find those cantaloupes that were too big or too small, and work with farmers to get those out of the field, provide a little bit of revenue for those farmers, because they were going to leave that in the field and then aggregate those and get them over to a food bank in a way that they could handle it.

And so I think the beauty of the program for us is we've been able to deliver, you know, three or four times the amount of boxes that we did during the one year program since that program ended devoid of USDA funding.

And that's really due to, you know, the incredible ability of California farmers and the bounty that we produce and the excess that we produce. And I've often heard through these in numerous discussions, we have an excess and an access problem. So we have excess fresh fruits and vegetables.

We need a way to get them out of the field. And then we have folks all throughout the state that lack access to these healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables. So it's something we're excited about.

And then one of the other things that was mentioned earlier on the panel is these alternative kind of pathways to work within different agencies to get healthy food to people, people who need it.

And because of our relationships with the food banks, we were introduced to a few different managed care plans who operate Medi Cal programs here in California.

And we've been able to take our fresh fruit and vegetable box and tailor it to a member's specific chronic conditions that they would utilize to qualify for and deliver that box directly to a member's home.

And we utilize that by sourcing from, from California growers and working with a team of nutritionists that helps us decide and design a box that would be most appropriate for that Member.

So you know, when we think about, you know, what I do anyways, when I think about all the different pathways that we're able to get healthy food out to people, you know, through these channels with food banks that we've been so fortunate to be part of and then now with, you know, Medi Cal plans that we're partnered with throughout the state, state and we're happy to report that we're contracted with several plans that represent close to half of the Medi Cal membership in California.

And we're currently executing this program and delivering healthy fresh fruits and vegetables to Medi Cal Members that struggle with chronic health conditions. And so, you know, this kind of beautiful story of how local agricultural producers came together during a time of need, during the pandemic.

We're able to identify an opportunity to help their operations while improving access to healthy fruits and vegetables and then have that turn into an opportunity where we've now are able to create a pipeline and a pull through so that our producers have another avenue to sell their products.

And creating that separate market channel that never existed before, I think is a tremendous opportunity for California agriculture to lean into the healthy attributes of the items we grow and how we integrate them in all different programs that we can throughout the state.

And lastly, we formed a company in 2020, kind of separate from what we were doing here, called Elevated Foods. And Elevated Foods is a platform that helps small and medium sized growers find new customers. And the way we do that is by providing technical assistance around sustainable and regenerative agriculture, food safety assistance.

Really all the challenges that small producers have in accessing larger customers, it's usually the bureaucratic kind of challenges that prevent that from happening. And through that company we were able to access a USDA grant under a program called the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities.

We were awarded a $20 million grant there, of which 75 to 80% of that money ends up directly in producers pockets in recognition of the climate smart practices that they're producing producing in their fields.

Further, we're awarded an RCPP grant through NRCS which will address specific irrigation challenges with California growers, helping them transition from, let's say furrow irrigation to drip irrigation. That was a $12 million project. And then lastly, I saw you mentioned RFSI on the screen.

We were awarded an RFSI grant, which is a regional food system infrastructure grant that allows for. For investments into automation and other tools at our food hub in Imperial county to allow for us to bring in bulk oranges from a grower and put it in eight different form factors to fit all these different programs.

So overall, just very excited about kind of some of the things that have happened over the last number of years. Of course concerned about funding and those other sorts of things going forward, but tremendous opportunities for the ag industry to participate.

All right, thank you so much to our panel. I'm going to bring it back to the Committee. I think Chair Soria has some questions first.

Yeah, thank you to all the panelists for that great information. Veronica, I think you shared a lot of really good stuff in terms of what you guys are personally doing. And one of the things that I wanted to comment on.

And then second, ask, I understand, you know, the land ownership challenges that you mentioned in Prop 4 this last cycle, there was funding included there. So I'm hoping that that will begin to address some of those challenges and barriers for especially small farmers that are leasing their land.

And so the, you know, insecurity of keeping their land long term and the desire to make investments when you don't own the land. And so that was something that I was strongly supportive of when we were looking at investment, including some investments for agriculture interested in. And then thank you for bringing up the Farms Together federal program.

Looking forward to having more discussions around that and see how the state can help on our end to continue some of those investments, which seem to be very fruitful.

Wanted to just see if you could speak to any potential regulations or laws that are hindering, you know, some of the work that you guys are doing, especially for the small farmers. I know that they're very thin margins from all the farmers that I meet, especially the smaller ones.

That's always one of the biggest points that is brought up. And so just wanting to see if there are any specifics that you can point us to that, you know, something that we can look to.

No, thank you for that question. And regarding the Prop 4 and land, I really appreciate been following that. So I'm really excited that that's something that, you know, it's being addressed at least to start with. Yeah, it's funny, I like removed regulation from what I was going to share just for brevity's sake.

But yes, it is especially for the small farm. And right now we are sort of in this transition phase from small to medium scale for whatever that means, because there's a lot of definitions. It's almost the regulatory pressure especially around like the food safety which is important.

But as long as we're able to meet certain standards and have plans in place, it is very costly for small producers to meet some of these regulations. Another thing is for our vehicles, for instance, we rely on refrigerated vehicles and sometimes they're restrictions on how long that vehicle could have been in operation because of the diesel.

It's all being done for climate smart clean energy. But it's putting a very unfortunate burden on smaller producers that we probably account for a very insignificant amount of any carbon emission. And so that, that adds to our, to our burden as well. I think those are like top two that come to mind right now.

And then as far as you know, I don't know. I think also labor constraints, I mean we all are trying to be one like really good employers to our teams. But I think it's also as we grow our teams it becomes harder to be able to manage.

I mean and I'm talking the difference between having four to five employees. Right.

And so I think that's how do we encourage these small businesses to want to get to that next level as opposed to what I hear is like I need to stay small because otherwise I just can't afford like the whatever gains I make in profit, I'm just going to lose. And having to meet these regulations. Those are a few that come to mind.

Thank you for, for sharing that kind of a common theme that I've heard from other smaller farmers that I've spoken to. So thank you.

Also just wanted to ask, I don't know for Tim, maybe if you can maybe speak to what are some of the other challenges that you guys have had as you guys are trying to improve, you know, these local food systems to address food insecurity. What are some of the challenges that you guys have seen that the state can be helpful with?

Sure. I think I could build on what Veronica offered. Bridge loans and different types of low interest support structures for small farms and businesses are instrumental. We have one small business development corporation, SBDC style Ag, Food Ag entity, farmlink that is a partner across the state. They have only 20 million in capital around a year.

And if you think of all the small farms and businesses around the state, we need to invest in more investment capital with low interest loans and support structures for them to build and grow. I think there's a lot of creativity and opportunity ahead to think about that.

And then there's innovations as small growers start creating bundling in food hubs. The food safety elements folks are exploring group gap and mechanisms to have an entity certify a number of farms in relationship so that each one of them don't have to pay higher premiums just to play in the marketplace.

So some creativities in that scale cross docking and initiatives to really support one another in moving product to different markets and channels. So that's really regional thinking and getting more resilient with the marketplace. Yeah, I think there's a few.

Thank you so much. I had just a couple questions. Broadly, you know, now that the Federal Government is engaging in trade war between tariffs of our neighboring countries, has that affected at all either your individual business or are you seeing anything, in Tim's case, in the food production system open to anyone who wants to take a stab at it first?

Sure. I mean, on our end with a lot of these, you know, topics, I think it's always the, the expectation which leads whatever actually happens. But I know for us where we're working on some irrigation improvement projects, the cost of materials have actually have been very impacted.

Where a budget that we made just six months ago is completely not, you know, it's very different right now, what we have to pay. So right now we're seeing it in the cost of materials and inputs.

And so right now we're curious of what this translates to as far as on the demand side for our product and if there are any negatives or benefits from this. But yeah, that's where I could speak to right now.

I'll just briefly note something and pass it to you as well, Steve. So the tariff trade wars, I think Secretary Rollins noted, where they're expecting like 49 billion in trade impacts to ag. Speaking to farmers, including our farmer Veteran Coalition founder Mike Gorman, who is there.

And the indication from the Administration is that they're going to solve that by emergency assistance programs for particular kama soy beans, but not specialty crops. So we need to think about specialty crops out here that kind of incentives are going to provide emergency assistance. There's speculation that's coming from taking it from snap.

We can't continue to create people hungry battling those trying to grow the food to feed people. Like, I think California is really wise and smart and we need to stay connected on that in terms of the marketplace, I believe distributors and broadliners for produce and products are talking to their clients that everything's going to go up.

And we heard that during the pandemic and we are, in a sense in another pandemic. It seems that we need to be creative about. So we need to think about the incentives and ways to stabilize our markets for our producers.

If these tariffs are going to be creating ramifications for food products abroad, maybe that's a good thing for some of our small regional producers on the market side. But you just share the issues on the production and management side and costs of running your business.

Thank you. Yeah, when I think about the tariffs, instead of looking forward to those, I look back at the last three or four or five years. And the incredible inflation and what it takes to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Incredible. Like outpacing the ability of people to pay on a contracted price.

You sign a contract for an item you're going to harvest in the fall and you think you're good and then your costs went crazy and the customer is expecting that same price. So you know, fertilizer cost, regulatory burden, labor cost, all those things are skyrocketing, I would say from the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain.

There's a lot of concern around the tariffs in the way that it'll impact. We're all tied together. You know, a lot of the producers that produce in the US also have partners in Mexico and other countries that help fill the gap when we, when mother nature doesn't allow for certain crops to be ready here.

And so they're all intertwined, invested in each other and all these different things. I'm really interested to see how it plays out. But at the end of the day, the grower usually eats it. So in this case it'll probably be a foreign grower that'll eat it.

But because the market, market is what the market is and what people are willing to pay for fresh fruits and vegetables is pretty finite. And so. Yeah, remains to be seen.

Thank you. And then I had just a question. I was just talking with Chair sorry about this, but several of you mentioned Prop 4 and regenerative agriculture. You know, in our conversations about fighting climate change and land use, oftentimes there's not as much conversation in the regenerative agriculture world.

But from your perspective, what are things that we could do in our climate investments through agriculture to fight climate change or have better be better stewards of the land? And that could be anything.

I'll jump in because we're participating in the climate smart grant. And so when we talk to growers, what we found was specialty crop growers, specifically the ones that don't get the funding that the other areas get. It's climate smart practices are good business.

Meaning like most of the things that USDA was looking for growers to implement, specialty crop growers do because it makes good sense and good business and it's so expensive to grow.

And so I think that, you know, in our experience talking to customers, they value climate smart and they value regenerative and they value sustainability as part of an entire portfolio of what you do, not as a standalone item but as kind of a plus one or an add on.

And we're really seeing a focus on the people that are producing the food and a real intense focus on the people that produce, harvest, deliver our food is what we're seeing.

Sure. And I think something that's come up with for us in the creation of our food hub and those that are interested in supporting this, because what is becoming apparent is that businesses, community Members want to see this. They want to be able to more easily access the food that's produced locally.

And the question begs the question of what are the practices that are being implemented by farmers and in our situation, how we are redefining regenerative. I think there's room for growth in that area of what producers are implementing certain practices versus others.

And we see that the more we are able to create markets for this, whether it's through for food insecurity or institutional markets. And we see that there is an emphasis on wanting to have those practices represented. Farmers will make those changes if they are not already practicing them, which I think many are already.

So I think if we're able to tie practices to more to markets, I think we are. I think that's a very easy way. I mean I've heard this a lot from conventional farmers that they're like, if I can make it work going organic or regenerative, I will do it. But it has to make sense in my bottom line.

I'd lay out a 10 point plan, but I know we don't have time. So the first one I'll dive right into like California ranchers having met with small ranchers in Sacramento or Secretary Ross this fall we had a regenerative beef summit and the University of California stepped in to commit to purchasing£400,000 this year of California grown product. These ranchers are small family ranchers that are not making it.

I think incentives for markets, whether it's institutions or corner stores that want to support regenerative and sustainable California grown product. We're seeing countries invest in that we can't compete with Australia, New Zealand with beef prices. Even when they want to scratch off the sustainability criteria on their scorecard, it's $2 cheaper a pound minimum.

So we need to think about how to support our ranchers for that side of it. And I think the land stewardship work, the investment for small producers to own land.

And I think that goes into the financing and loan work that could play in bigger into the vision of a more robust, regenerative, sustainable food and farming economy in the state with some of that bond money. And I know it's still being written and worked on, so I'm excited to see what's cooked up.

Yeah, could I just really quickly on the ranching piece because we also will collaborate with ranchers where we're not able to aggregate their products yet. But I think that that's an important thing.

We have to disaggregate the processing of animal product and any ranching product because that is one of the big reasons we're not able to compete with product coming from the outside is because of the high cost of processing for ranchers.

And I would be remiss if I didn't honor our fisher folks. So our California fisheries and those producing and harvesting fish and involving our economy, I think the state needs to look at how we want to reinvest in the future for that as well.

Any other questions, comments from Members? Well, I'd like to thank our panel very much. Thank you for giving us a great overview of the food production system, some of the challenges. I'm going to invite the panel three to come up now and thank you so much.

Thank you.

I'll just make a quick comment is that, you know, I don't ever have the chance to sit on the Agriculture Committee. So it's really fun to be able to talk about these issues with my fellow Assembly Member. Yeah, we're learning so much about it.

But I do think it's very interesting is that as we talk about some of the, you know, as we have a limited state budget, what other return on investments and what we can do. You know, I think something was brought up today about low interest or zero interest loans.

Interest could be an interesting venue for us because while traditionally it might be nice for producers and farmers to get grants, that might not be a position for the state budget, but it might be a position where, you know, it's low interest or zero interest loan is still money that they can use and perhaps using our procurement power in the state where, you know, if we are as a state a big entity and buyer of a lot of products, it might be useful to prioritize our own local agriculture instead of other places.

So I'm so long time for the, for the panel to get started here, but we have a panelist of four here to give us a discussion about farm to table California's response to hunger exploring food safety net programs. We have four wonderful presenters today and each I'm going to ask again five to eight minutes.

I know some of you have some slides, but I'll allow Andrew, you're going to go first in representing Grace in child poverty. I don't know if you have slides here, but. Okay, no, but let's do Five to eight minutes and then we'll do discussion as before. Yep, thank you.

We got seven minutes on the Senate side the other day, so hopefully. Okay, Andrew Cheyne, he/him from Grace End Child Poverty California just going to go kind of back to the top. You heard some statistics earlier from Tess and others and just really want the Legislature to feel really good that the California model is working.

You know, the USDA data and I know Becky might use some other statistics and it is unfortunate that we sort of have multiple studies. But you know, when you look at the annual USDA data, finally California food insecurity is lower than the national rate and is statistically significant.

And not only is that the case, when you look at the three year sort of moving average between 2011 to 2023, 2011 to 2013 and 2021 to 2023, that a reduction from 10 years ago to the most recent data is also statistically significant. And that's because as has been spoken to, we have healthy school meals for all.

We've made other investments that we're going to talk about. So I just want the Legislature and the Administration to get a lot of credit and to feel really good. There's more work to do. But like as someone, and you heard earlier, right.

That the food insecurity was so stubbornly high during the Great Recession and I worked through many of those years and some of my colleagues as well, you know, it was just really felt like we were never going to turn that corner and we did in the pandemic when California finally got lower and then we've, we've kept up that momentum.

So what are some of the reasons why that is in addition to school meals for all, the state has really embraced and is maximizing the Sunbucks program. More than $500 million in EBT went out to families with children in low income families this last summer. CalFresh, as has already been spoken to, the participation rate is high.

We have work to do. So I appreciate the questions on language access and some of the other issues, but when I started our participation rate was less than 50. So to see 81 and to see that we even moved the national average. Right. The reason the national average is close to 90 is because we bumped it up.

Right. We went from 68 to 81 just in the last couple of years. We have a strong disaster response. There are certainly room to improve it. But it's a place where the state time and time again is trying to maximize that disaster aid.

And most recently the EBT chip tap rollout, we are the first state in the country that is stemming from the scourge of millions of dollars of theft of food and cash assistance from the poorest families by rolling out the EBT Chip Tap cards.

And I'm glad to say that thanks to the strong work by the Department in partnership with advocates that the cards are working across the state. We're not through that transition yet, but it's been highly successful. So what are the things to do?

As it's already been expressed in terms of CalFresh improving customer service, it is the call centers. I appreciate the questions earlier. The language access we have a wonderful benefitscal website, but there is a strong backlog. When you all are passing new legislation, it's minimum a year to see anything actually implemented because of the IT systems.

And so there's more work to do to try and streamline that process so that policy becomes a reality for families. Otherwise the law is passed, but we don't have implementation.

Strengthening the minimum benefit I'll just point out that the national evidence shows that when we improve the minimum benefit for households, that actually improves the purchases of healthy items like organic products.

I don't think the data can distinguish it at that granular level, but it does speak to that basic affordability issue and that's a way in which we could also strengthen enrollment. As Deputy Director Garcia spoke to school meals we need to continue farm to school the kitchen infrastructure grants. Right. I know that the schools my kids attend.

Right. There's still work to be done to get that scratch cooking into the schools for Sunbucks. We need to be strengthening families ability to access it. So there are a certain number of children who need to apply, overwhelmingly immigrant kids who are not automatically eligible because they're often excluded from other programs that would make them eligible.

So they need a translated accessible website. They deserve that kind of experience that'll help us draw down federal dollars and last and most certainly not least, food for all. And appreciate the leadership and the comments spoken to that we must continue without delays or exclusions.

So in turning to the federal threats, really we're talking about attacks that threaten the foundation of the program which as Sarah Hanson from CDFA spoke to, threatens the other programs that we're gonna talk about in this panel which as she put piggyback off of the core SNAP program, if there's cuts to eligibility, if there is cuts to benefits, that just really undermines the foundation.

The first threat is the mass layoffs, right. Of federal employees. We're talking about highly skilled folks, right, who are now looking for Work, they're potentially taking jobs away from families who are trying to use the Cal Works program, the expanded subsidized employment. Right. They're now competing with highly skilled federal employees.

Those families are probably now going to be turning to CalFresh as well as EDD. Right. And unemployment programs. Immigration. I believe Ms. Aguiar Curry spoke to it among other Members.

We know during the first year of Administration that one in four lawfully present residents who are eligible for CalFresh and Medi Cal stayed away because the fear factor was too high. And so we unfortunately would expect even without policy changes, although we are concerned about potential policy changes as well.

And then in turning to Congress, unfortunately there are significant attacks. And I appreciate what Secretary Ross said about the Legislature standing strong. And so the first handout is a letter you may have seen from your colleague Senator Hurtado, who sent a letter to Mr. Valadao saying don't vote for the budget resolution. Don't vote to cut Medicaid.

And so I would love to work with you or your teams on similar letters. And certainly I want you to know how deep the roster of groups is that is committed. And these are just a couple of the examples. Right. We are sending in letters. Do not slash the safety net for billionaire tax cuts.

Do not touch school meal programs. Do not touch the CalFresh program. And I'm sure you're aware that there are other organizations who are leading on the fight back on Medi California. All right. With my time though, I want to focus on what are the cuts to the CalFresh program in total.

This again, this is just the congressional lane. Leaving aside the administrative attacks, you know, there is a threat of $230 billion federally, nationally over the budget window, 10 year budget window, $30 billion shared to California. Okay. Every $1.0 billion in benefits is 13,560 jobs according to USDA. So we're talking about 406,800 jobs. Right.

Because now farm workers are going to have less food to pick because there's going to be less markets, as we just sort of heard about, for farmers. There's less shipments and loads for truckers, there's less food on the shelves for grocery stores. Grocery store closures in rural areas.

There's a new report from the Commonwealth foundation about that today. Okay. What are some of the ways in which these could be achieved, as you've already heard spoken to? I think you might have mentioned it, Mr. Chair. The thrifty food plan. Right. A rollback of the basic math. And before Congress, actually improve the thrifty food Plan.

The only way that you could get foods that met the dietary guidelines, let alone organics, you had to buy like gallons of orange juice, bushels of potatoes. Right. You could, you could make it work, but no consideration to your dietary needs, your cultural needs. Right.

The time tax it would take to go buy in bulk and prepare all that food. Right. So that's what that means, an expansion of the failed time limit. And I just want to note that 97% of of California families who are struggling to make ends meet have a working adult.

It is a complete myth that folks are not working in this state or others. Right. But the time limit. Right. It doesn't offer anyone a job. It just says if you can't report and document that you're working sufficient hours, we're now going to take away your food. How does making someone hungry help them get a job?

Broad based categorical eligibility. This would introduce red tape and a benefit cliff for families who have earnings. It allows us to screen families up to 200% FPL. We know how low the federal poverty limits are. And last and most certainly not least is a state cost shift.

And this one is really despicable because it will look to Members of Congress like they're not making a cut. But it would mean that California would have to come up with billions of dollars for the benefits.

It would break the foundational promise of SNAP CalFresh, that the Federal Government is going to pay for the benefits and then the states have to supply 50%. In California, it's blended state and county. Right. The administrative costs are 50/50. Right. And so that would completely break that promise. And CalFresh is $12 billion a year in benefits.

$1.0 billion a month. So any rollback of the federal commitment there would be boat swamping for California resources. But just to say again, we don't take those cuts for granted. We are fighting hard. We appreciate hearings like this. We would love to find ways to continue to elevate your voices if need be.

We will be asking you to backfill and maintain a focus on core benefits. Right. To maintain benefits eligibility and access and to reinforce the foundation even as we endeavor to build out the program that families deserve. And after we work together to get these cuts off the table, to go back to the work of strengthening the program.

Many of the best policies in D.C. are led by California Members, by Mr. Jimmy Gomez to get rid of the student rule. Barbara Lee. And we hope Latifah Simon will get rid of the time limit. Mr. Mullen, your former colleague has, and Mr. Gomez too, but Mr. Mullin has the Bill to finally update the federal poverty limit.

So anyway, we'd love to help connect each of those issues. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Now, Becky Silva with the California Association of Food Banks, if you could please.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Becky Silva with the California Association of Food Banks. We represent 41 food banks across the whole state that partner with about 6,000 community partners that distribute food to their local communities. Collectively, our food bank Network serves about 6 million people per month.

You've heard a lot of data about the State of food insecurity, but I just wanted to add at CAFB, we look at data that is put out by the Census Household Pulse survey which shows that 1 in 5 households in California are currently food insecure, with those numbers being much worse for families with children, which is about one in four households experiencing food insecurity.

Another data point that I feel like puts this into context really well that hopefully will resonate is that currently 10% of Californians are reporting that they're getting free groceries from a food distribution sometime in the previous seven days. That is compared to 7% of the US overall.

And ask any food bank around the state to share their experience locally. I have a long list here, but I'm just going to share one with you which hopefully will resonate for all of you which will feel kind of close to home.

Earlier this year, the Sacramento Food bank and Family Services had the busiest month that they have ever had in their decades long history of operating in Sacramento.

So hopefully that helps to put into context that hunger is still very much on the rise and what we are looking at in 2025, and I don't use this word lightly, but it's a perfect storm of food banks trying to continue to serve their communities at the same time that they are facing really serious federal and state cuts to funding programs.

I just wanted to mention briefly sort of what you are probably hearing about and seeing in the news recently around federal cuts to food programs that are impacting food banks. So there's two that I'll touch on really quickly that are both tied to Federal Commodity Credit Corporation or CCC funding.

So one is tfap, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is a federal entitlement program that provides commodity food to food banks that then they can distribute in their communities. This program over the last three months since the beginning of this year has seen around 300 truckloads of food either canceled or paused.

And that impacts almost all of the TFAT providing food banks across the state. Just one that really popped out at me. The LA Regional Food Bank has seen more than 70 truckloads either canceled or paused.

And then the other one being the LFPA program, which you've heard a little bit about already, which was paused and then unpaused, causing a lot of difficulty in the network to try to figure out what to do.

And then the third round of funding for that has actually been canceled, which, which will mean that the program ends in 2026. So that's what's happening federally.

And now, just to draw your attention to a state issue, Cal Food, which you've heard about a little bit already, is a state funding program that was established about 10 years ago that provides funding to food banks to purchase California grown and produced foods. In 2024, Cal Food allowed food banks to purchase 80 million pounds of food.

And this represented about 37% of the network's food purchasing budget overall. The really great thing about Cal Food funding is that food banks are able to spend their dollars depending on what their community needs. So a couple examples of that.

The Community Food Bank of San Benito actually uses all of their Cal Food funding to partner with a local tortilla bakery. And they purchase tortillas. It's a family run business in their local community, and they use their dollars to make sure that community Members get tortillas every week.

Another example, which is local to me, the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Sonoma county uses all of their cow food dollars to purchase eggs, because that is actually something that's very rarely donated.

I think we all know that the price of eggs have been shooting through the roof, and it's a healthy, easy source of protein for a lot of families.

But the end of the fiscal year, at the end of June, Cal Food funding will drop to just $8 million per year compared to the average annual funding over the last three years of about $60 million per year. So that's a close to 90% drop in funding.

We recently asked food banks what their plan is if Cal Food does not get maintained at $60 million per year. And the simple answer is that there is no Plan B. It will mean less food to less people. It will mean less variety of food.

In a lot of cases, a third of food banks said that they would have to reduce their paid workforce, and one fifth of food banks said that they would have to close existing food distribution sites. So this is really serious for food banks.

We're really grateful for leadership from Assemblymember Nguyen and Assemblymember Rodriguez, who recently submitted a budget letter on this issue. And we would encourage you all to sign on to that budget letter as well to express your support.

And then lastly, I just wanted to spend a moment talking about CalFresh, obviously our state's biggest anti hunger program that provides benefits to literally millions of people. But also want to mention that CalFresh benefits average just $6.22 per day per person.

We were really proud to lead advocacy with partners to increase the CalFresh minimum benefit currently set at $23 per month.

Which I think, you know, if you've been to a grocery store recently, you will, you will experience that $23 is barely enough to enable you to buy a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk and some eggs, maybe let alone last the whole month.

So we're really excited that that pilot is about to launch thanks to really quick planning and implementation work by cdss. But we don't want to stop there. Some states are raising it to $100 per month, so we think that there's more that we can do there to increase the minimum.

And then just lastly, tying all these threads together, you know, I've talked about the importance of both food banks and CalFresh in addressing hunger. And the reality is that people often need both. So we know that through national data that One third of CalFresh recipients also visit food banks because CalFresh benefits just don't last.

And so we know that it's the combination of all of these programs that people rely on to help feed their families every day. Thank you.

All right, thank you very much. Now move on to the Executive Director of Fullwell, Eli Zigas. Or actually we'll go to CEO of Agriculture Institute of Marin. But I also like to welcome Assembly Member Leticia Castillo, the Vice Chair and Human Services too.

Great. Well, thank you and good evening. My name is Andy Naja-Riese and I'm the CEO of the Agricultural Institute of Marin. And we're a nonprofit organization. We operate nine certified farmers markets and a mobile farmers market across the cities of Hayward, Newark, Oakland, San Rafael, San Francisco and West Marin Rural County.

I'm also here on behalf of the California alliance of Farmers Markets, which is a network of about 120 farmers markets across the state. And I'm going to be speaking about the importance of one of our nutrition incentive programs in California called Market Match.

So as you heard before, Secretary Ross and Sarah Hanson discuss, Market Match is a program that supports both families and individuals shopping with CalFresh as well as California's small to mid sized farmers. As our state grapples with the complex challenges of the climate Crisis, supply chain disruptions, inflationary driven, rising prices.

We can't look at food and nutrition in a vacuum. We have to really look at holistic solutions and Market Match is one of those important solutions. So the program started in 2009 and and it's a statewide food safety net program that brings critical federal dollars to California.

It's the largest program that's funded through cnip, the California Nutrition Incentive Program. It's a federal state partnership. And Market Match reinvests federal and state dollars into small and mid sized farms, rural California communities and increases the spending power of CalFresh shoppers.

Market match is overseen by the Berkeley based Ecology center which operates a consortium of 60 community based organizations across 38 counties in California with 270 participating sites. That includes certified farmers markets, mobile farmers markets, farm stands and community supported agriculture.

The way the program works is that when CalFresh shoppers visit a certified farmers market, they can swipe their EBT card at the information booth and they're able to receive EBT and Market Match tokens. There's a daily maximum. It ranges in the state from about 10 to $20 per site, per household, per day.

At our markets we offer $15 per day, so $15 becomes $30. And at our mobile farmers market as well as farm stands and community supported agriculture, we provide 50% off the total value without any maximum that's offered.

So what happens is that when people go to the farmer's market they can use their CalFresh EBT tokens to buy any groceries that are CalFresh eligible. Milk, bread, tortillas, eggs, dairy, cheese and jam. And then their Market Match tokens have to be spent specifically on fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables here in California.

And the program is proven to improve access to healthy food and also helps prevent diet related disease. In 2023, market match led to about $19.4 million in market match spending at over 574,000 sites. And we've estimated that that means about 38.8 million servings of fruits and vegetables grown by California's small to mid sized farmers.

Research shows that most CalFresh shoppers come to farmers markets because of the Market Match program. It makes them feel seen, feel welcomed and helps them make healthy locally grown foods more affordable. And I wanted to share a quick testimonial from one of those shoppers.

So one of our customers said, I wanted to thank you for the EBT Market Match program. I'm on Social Security and my disability comes with a lot of dietary restrictions. The farmer's market is one of the few places I can go to where I know the food I get will be safe for me to eat.

And with the Market Match program, it's the only place I can come close to affording it. It's a real lifesaver for me. What really makes this program unique is that people are able to shop locally at certified farmers markets here within California. And they can get fresh, recently harvested produce that's full of flavor and packed with nutrition.

We also know that food sold at farmers markets travel less food miles. So most food in the U.S. travels about 300 to 1500 miles. But foods that are sold locally generally travel less than 100 miles and have a much smaller carbon footprint.

We also know that the impact from the California Market Match program is not only to Calfra shoppers, but also to California small and mid sized farmers like we heard Veronica speak about earlier. So farmers markets represent small scale and midsize farmers. Many of those farmers are certified organic. They use cover cropping and other climate smart practices.

They may use rotational grazing as part of their livestock regenerative operations. And small scale farms actually represent about 80% of California's farms. Small scale farms are also entry points for beginning farmers. They're low risk ways to enter the market without needing the added expenses for commercial production.

And they also play a really crucial role for supporting local environmental health and community food security. And as we think about solutions to hunger, we really want to elevate Market Match because it not only addresses the crisis of food insecurity, but it also makes sure that small farmers are part of these solutions.

Here in California, we believe that local small farms are investing back in their local communities. It helps to keep farming food grown locally, supports biodiversity within our local food sheds, and also helps to support local food economies.

And as you heard mentioned earlier, for every dollar that's sold through the Market Match program, we see a triple return within our local communities, which means more jobs, more local spending as well. So there's huge economic impact.

What we also know is that when a California farmer sells their produce locally through a farmer's market, for every dollar of food sold, they actually end up taking away about 90 cents on the dollar. While food sold at grocery stores and wholesale channels, California farmers only earn about 14.5 cents on the dollar.

So investments through Market Match help to provide nutritional security, promote health and well being, and also help to support our local economies as we're planning for the future. As we heard earlier, funds were secured for Market Match here in the State of California last year.

The final budget included about $35 million that will cover us for this year plus two additional years. However, we've had to rely on one time appropriations, as many of us do, for funding. And given the long track record of this program over 25 years, bipartisan support.

We're at the point where we want to make this program permanent and ongoing. So we will be asking for funding next year to help support the ongoing importance of market match in our communities. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much. All right, on to our last but not least, Eli for Fullwell.

All right, should say good evening at this point to the chair and Members. My name is Eli Zigas. I'm the Executive Director at Fullwell. Fullwell is a nonprofit based here in California and we focus on food policy that advances and promotes health, justice and sustainability.

And I appreciate being asked to share with you about another program you've heard about so many, the calfresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT program. Like other programs you've heard about tonight, Cal Food and the California Nutrition Incentive Program. This is one that I think has the double benefit of why we're here today. We're talking about addressing food security.

So this is a program that reduces hunger. It's also a program that supports California farmers. And before I get too deep into the impact, let me explain how the program works.

It's very similar to Market Match and I would say the difference, one of the overriding differences of this one is it's primarily focused on grocery store context as opposed to farmer's markets. So imagine you're a CalFresh participant. You walk into one of the participating locations.

There are about 90 grocery stores across the state in one farmer's market and you do your normal shopping. You've got $5.32 of carrots, onions, cilantro in your basket and you go to the cash register like normal, take out your EBT card, you swipe like normal. Assuming you have money in your account, $5.32 gets deducted as normal.

What's different, what's new is Immediately you get $5.32 rebated back to your card, effectively making the fruits and vegetables free. And that's up to $60 a month. So that is what the EBT program is. It's fruit and vegetable supplemental benefits.

And the mechanism is, is through the normal process at a grocery store in which you purchase your food. This is very complementary to the other programs. And I think Becky made the point that food banks support both CalFresh and their own operations because some people need Both.

And I would say this is true of we have many different channels by which people get the assistance they need. And Cal Food is one, Market Match is another. CNIP is another. And the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT, they are complementary. They are not duplicative and we need them all right now.

You've heard the statistics about how bad hunger is. This program really got off the ground in 2012. I mean, sorry, take that back. This program got off the ground in 2023. I don't know why I said 2012. Yeah, 2023. And then has had two cycles and one was from 2023 to April 2024.

And then with the support of the Legislature and Governor last year, an additional $10 million was allocated to the program. So it restarted again right around Halloween this past Halloween and went until January just a few months ago when it was forced to stop again for running out of money.

Like I said, it's at 90 different grocery stores. They're up in Mendocino, too. And there are seven in the southern part of the Bay Area in Salinas, and then the vast majority are in Southern California to chain Mother's Nutritional center grocery stores. Some quick stats on the impact.

$17 million in benefits earned by CalFresh households through the course of the two cycles.

But to make that a little more granular, in January alone, which was the biggest month of the program, it was $3.3 million that households earned, 67,000 households particularly, which works out to an average of about $49 a month per household, that people are getting effectively free fruits and vegetables. Though the retail locations are only in 10 counties.

We know that Californians from more than 40 counties are benefiting because people move around the state. We know that people who use this program like it 95 said 95% of survey respondents said they want to see the program expand. 92% said that this program supports their family's health.

And 80% of respondents said they bought more or much more fruits and vegetables because of the program. That's a survey administered by the Department of Social Services.

And I should have said earlier that this program has gotten up and was able to restart so quickly is a testament to the work of the agency, the Department of Social Services and the Office of of Technology and Solutions Integration really couldn't have done it without them and the grocery partners themselves.

But those are all statistics and I think it's helpful to hear from CalFresh participants themselves about the impact of this program. So we have a video and these are testimonials collected at Mother's Nutritional center stores. That store is just really good with their customer engagement and captured some stories from people.

Well, $60 of the fruits and vegetables. It gives you a lot of things to make especially for your kids and things like that. And it's healthy, it's fruits, vegetables, that's what they need. Because a lot of families right now are struggling with the high prices and stuff like that at the grocery store.

So $60 every month is really helpful for a lot of people right now.

Hello everybody. My name is Valentina. I'm a resident of Montebello for eight years. I am so happy that the Pilot Program, it actually helped me reverse my type 2 diabetes. Now I'm just like the opposite.

I now am reactive, hypoglycemic, being at my blood sugar drops because the Pilot Program helped me eat much healthier, make healthier choices. I no longer crave the bread, the pasta and everything I used to. I crave the vegetables. So I'm just really glad the program is back because it's very beneficial.

I am so excited that the Pilot Program came back. This is going to help my family. I have a three year old and a nine year old and with Thanksgiving coming, it's like I didn't even spend anything today. I get all of it back and there's a lot of families out here that need this extra assistance.

So thank you so much. Pilot program.

In addition to that impact for families, I know because this is a Joint Hearing, I also want to emphasize there is an ag impact as well.

So ok Produce is the produce distributor who sells to Mother's Nutritional center and they reported that when the program is active they go from delivering produce once a week to some stores to in some cases two or three times a week. Like the increase in sales is very real.

That helps people address their food needs, but it's also supporting California farmers because so much of what is grown and is purchased is grown by farmers here in California. The potential of this program is great. We are just scratching the surface of what we could do at full well.

We have a long term goal for this to be available at grocery stores statewide. Really any place where fruits and vegetables are sold and people use CalFresh, that is a big leap from where we are now. But the near term goal is to extend this program so it doesn't turn on and off that it runs year long.

So that's extension for 12 months and a modest expansion. Chair Lee has put forward, along with Senator Richardson a $63 million budget request. So while we're talking about budget requests to sign on, would love support for that one.

And also Assemblymember Lee has put forward AB936, which would tweak the policy framework to basically set the program up for that expansion. I want to note it's really important to understand that in these tough budget times, of that $63 million request, 98.5% of it is budgeted to go straight into people's pockets. It is for those supplemental benefits.

I think one of the things we really find strongly valuable about this program is how efficient it is in addition to how effective it is. And when we have not much money to go around, I think that's a really important factor to consider.

So the last things I'll leave you with is California has put state funds to do something very important. It's done that on multiple programs here. You're hearing it across the board. And I think what I'd love to leave you with is you have a number of great programs, including the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT program.

We can help more people. We just need to put the political will and the effort in to do it. And I hope you'll join with your colleagues to make that happen. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I thank the panel. Now we're going to go to member questions or comments. If Members have any questions or comments, please indicate to me now. Okay.

I just also want to say thank you for Eli for reminding us about the bill that is setting on course the CalFresh Cal Fresh Fruits and Vegetable program to become permanent that we just passed the Human Services Committee yesterday. So all the Human Services Members just voted for yesterday. So it's on its way to.

Senator Rodriguez, did you have any questions?

Yes, I have a couple. I just wanted to ask, given the recent federal actions, are we going to have enough food readily available to meet our community's needs?

That is a great question. I hope so. You know, like I said earlier in my comments, the scale of the cuts that we're looking at, especially in terms of SNAP that we just heard about that Andrew was sharing 30 billion in cuts potentially to SNAP.

I think it's safe to say that food banks cannot make up the difference of what that cut would mean if Cal Food funding is not maintained. That's the state funding program.

Like I shared in my comments too, our survey of food banks tells us that no, they will not be able to make up the difference for 50 plus $1.0 million that is no longer supporting them to purchase the items that they distribute in their communities. And same with the TFAP orders that have been canceled or paused.

I shared that, you know, that's we're looking at about 300 truckloads just in these last three months since January that have been impacted. Food banks can't recover from all those levels of cuts all at the same time, not to mention just if they were facing one of those potential cuts.

And so I think it's, you know, really imperative that we're doing what we can, that you are doing what you can also to lift up, you know, actions that congress can take to protect and safeguard these programs and also to look to our state budget to make sure that we're making the investments needed to keep families nourished.

Just very briefly, I would just add, you know, on the theme of the Joint Hearing, that, you know, if the dollars in the CalFresh program are taken away through snap cuts, right.

As I sort of spoke to you earlier, we will see ripple effects of job loss, of grocery store closures, of impacts to farmers and trucking, and, you know, some of the stakeholders you heard from earlier. So really, we need to prevent these cuts from happening in the first place.

And one thing just to add to that, so we believe in a decentralized food system. We should invest in local and regional food sovereignty. So that's why Proposition 4 provides infrastructure funding for farmers markets, mobile farmers markets, urban agriculture, and community gardens.

So that way we can think about what are ways we can build capital and help to empower communities to produce their own food. So that way we are able to withstand challenges when foods get stuck on cargo ships. Local food does not have to sit on a cargo ship and get impacted by tariffs.

And I've learned that of the 300 truckloads that have been stopped, 70 of those go to the LA Regional Food Bank. And I represent the San Fernando Valley, which receives the majority of the resources from the food bank. So I just want to thank you all for the work you're doing and your advocacy.

And I know that you have partners in this legislature. So just thank you for everything you're doing.

Thank you.

Alright. I also wanted to just ask a more nuanced question about the Market Match program, too. So the Market Match tokens are utilized for local growers. Right. But as a consumer, how do they know? I mean, I think defacto. Is everyone there? Right.

But, like, is there ever a problem where De facto can't use a token for a certain vendor? Because, you know, when we're working on the CalFresh program, it's very much a consumer, very minimal friction. There's no friction in that system.

So I'm just wondering if there is any friction of the using the tokens in the farmer's market setting, I imagine there's as much. But just wondering if it ever becomes an issue.

I wouldn't say there's any friction with it. I mean, we do have to. We are an FNS retailer, so we have to follow requirements.

What is that acronym?

Sorry. The Food and Nutrition Service. So we're SNAP retail, another acronym, CalFresh retailer. There's a lot of acronyms, but no. So we have to maintain adequate reporting systems and tracking.

I think that in many ways. So the reason why we prefer the model where you have a centralized point of sale at a farmer's market information booth. So like for example, at our Newark farmers market in your district, Chair Lee we'll have let's say 40 farmers that are attending there.

The requirement for every farmer to actually go and sign up for food and nutrition service number is quite burdensome. We have at the Newark market, about a third of them are Hmong or Laotian. So there's language barriers. So we actually.

We do the work for the farmers, so we actually make it easy for them and make it easy for the customers. And what we also like for customers is that they get the freedom of choice so they can choose how they want to spend their money, their funds, and decide which farmers they want to spend that at.

And are these administered burdens of this dictate from the Federal Government or is this something the state can control?

I mean, there's. There's challenges about the state and the federal level, but we're lucky that Sarah Hansen makes this a lot easier for us. And the Ecology center, which runs the program provides a lot of great support. But. But with that said, one of the things that is changing in California and federally is that.

So in addition to CalFresh, there's the WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Programs. Those programs are transitioning from a paper coupon to an electronic system where participants will tap a card with a farmer. So we're actually very curious to see how that will work.

There's also going to be incentives and training that's funded by the California Nutrition Incentive Program too.

Right? Great. And I was going to ask because I know historically there was challenges at farmers markets with things like the EBT PIPE program. So in addition to the barriers you just talked about, were there any other barriers to participation for local farmers when with programs like the CalFresh EBT pilot?

Yeah, I mean, I would say that the nature of a farmer's market, we're not set up to operate like a grocery store. So we don't have one central register for the whole store. We're working with many different producers and vendors at once. So it's a lot of moving parts where it's a time limited event.

So it could be four or five hours and we can find there can be thousands of people coming at that one particular time. So when we ran the pilot at our Oakland farmers market at Lake Merritt, while it was very popular, it actually led to the point where it became just administratively challenging.

People were waiting in lines up to two hours. We had to pull staff from the farmer's market to operate the pilot program. So and that's okay. We learn from it. And I think through our partnership, we're learning. Market Match is really directed for farmers markets, mobile markets and Farm Direct.

And the fruit and veggie program is really geared towards grocery stores. So they're very complementary, right?

Very much so. All right, any other questions from our, our members and the committee? Because this is the last panel, so just in case. Alright, I just wanted to thank you all for the very robust discussion. We of course ran a little bit over and everything. But I really do appreciate all the work you do.

And I think to Andrew's point, you know, the entire ecosystem of food security and our, our agricultural business hangs in the balance right now. Perhaps just to suffice some billionaire tax cuts. So it is really important that the Federal Government upholds its end of the equation. But California will try its best.

They continue to serve the people of California. So thank you. I want to thank our final panel and I'm going to invite members of the public to make public comment now. So we're going to be doing, we're going to be allowing for public comment. If anyone is in the room, please provide public comment for.

I would ask a minute or so, but please do come with the microphone if you're ready.

I think I'm the only one. I mean, I realize it's 6pm and I'm also really hungry. So I'm Beth Smoker, policy Director at the California California Food and Farming Network. So we're a network of about 50 organizations across the state. Anti hunger orgs, a lot of the folks here, sustainable ag, and then also farm workers and labor.

So as you can imagine, I'm really like encouraged by this Joint Hearing of bringing these two issues together really intentionally. I changed my talking points like a billion times because so many good questions were asked and good things were said.

And I think I just was sitting there thinking like I, I think about this a lot, like how does this all come together? And this is the base, right. These dozens of programs that we talked about are just the baseline.

And with all these amazing programs and innovation that California has, like Assemblymember Lee, the stats you started with still hold. One in five people are still hungry. We're losing small farms at a rate of four a day. Our farm workers are also hungry as Assemblymember Soria has lived, experience, experience with that.

So I just kept thinking like this is a minimum. We have to keep funding this. We have to keep fighting for federal funding, we have to increase funding, we have to continue participation. We also have to be asking ourselves what are we funding that's counter to the narrative that we built today.

And then we have to do more. And I think conversations like this are a start to that of really cross sector innovation. Yeah.

And in closing I'll just say like I think California is known for bold ideas and, and I'll say that I kept thinking like how do we create systems where people don't need some of these services?

And I say that really delicately, like for especially all my anti hunger folks and partners in the room like CalFresh is a proven anti hunger tool and we absolutely need to keep funding that. And what does our world look like if for example farm workers and grocery store workers have a living wage?

And I think we can do that through food and farming policies. When we really start to recognize that the hungry person, the farm worker, the farmer, the grocery store worker, the forgotten tribal member are all from underserved, under resourced communities, that policy can directly improve and change and those folks are the backbone of our food system.

So yeah, just leaving here with a lot of gratitude for this conversation and looking forward to more.

Thank you, thank you any other members of the public. So you know, I'm just going to have some closing remarks. I want to thank Assemblymember Soria and the Assembly Agriculture Committee for hosting this joint oversight hearing today.

And of course for our committee members, our panelists and members of the public who joined us today for the support discussion. As we move forward, this hearing will help inform our legislative efforts to support and improve food access across California. I look forward to continuing this work with all of you and I really do. Thank you again.

You know, there's no more crucial issue than making sure that all of Californians have, are not starving and are not malnutritioned.

Because even I representing the wealthiest county and the wealthiest state and the wealthiest country in the wealth in all of human history, we have real human suffering and kids starving even though we have vast wealth in this state and country.

And I do think, especially members, as we grapple with our budget situation and uncertain federal and hostile federal government often, that we got to think about what's our rate of return. And I think there's no better rate of return than, than making sure families are fed.