Show Support for H.B. 7013 to Ensure Local Food Gets to CT Schools

Urge your state legislators to support H.B. 7013, “An Act Concerning Enhancements To The Local Food For Schools Incentive Program and The CT Grown For CT Kids Grant Program,” currently under consideration. This bill strengthens our state’s local food incentive program and ensures continued funding for farm-to-school initiatives through the CT Grown for CT Kids Grant Program.

These two programs were abruptly terminated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To learn more about the value and impact they have – and what it will mean to lose them – we recommend this recent CT Insider piece.

This funding enabled them to supply fresh produce from local farms to pantries statewide. “The loss of this funding is immense,” a spokesperson for Connecticut Foodshare said, “and it has a direct impact on both the people we serve as well as our local farm partners. The program would have enabled us to provide millions of fresh, Connecticut-grown meals to the one in eight Connecticut residents (including one in six children) experiencing food insecurity.”

We have to ask ourselves, what could possibly be a higher priority than ensuring students and those facing food insecurity have access to nutritious food, while simultaneously supporting the economic health of Connecticut’s small farms?

Find your legislators here and tell them that you would like them to prioritize the passage of H.B. 7013 so that Connecticut can do the work of serving both our children and our small farms in lieu of federal government agencies that have decided not to.