Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, will join farmers, food program providers, elected officials and others to speak on the importance of United States Department of Agriculture food assistance programs.
The USDA under President Donald Trump announced it would end funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance and Local Food for Schools programs, which under President Joe Biden provided millions for local food supply chains across the country.
Peters "believes it is in America's interest to ensure that every child and family has access to nutritional food, and we should take advantage of local farms to feed kids and hungry people," a statement from the Congressman's office read. "San Diego food banks distributed over 900,000 pounds of food purchased from local farms through the USDA programs being targeted for funding cuts in the Republican budget proposal."
The Trump administration canceled around $660 million in funding for the programs that was to be paid out over the next few years.
The cuts in the Trump budget also include major slashes to other food assistance programs.
Earlier this week, the Department of Agriculture demanded states hand over sensitive information about food assistance recipients such as addresses, Social Security numbers and possibly citizenship status.
"President Trump is rightfully requiring the federal government to have access to all programs it funds and SNAP is no exception," said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins. "For years, this program has been on autopilot, with no USDA insight into real-time data. The Department is focused on appropriate and lawful participation in SNAP, and today's request is one of many steps to ensure SNAP is preserved for only those eligible."
Despite the planned cuts on local farm programs, on May 1 Rollins said she was putting farmers first and rolling back Biden's "woke DEI initiatives."
The agency has terminated more than $5.5 billion in "unnecessary and wasteful spending," since Jan. 20, it claims.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, served an average of 42 million people each month in 2024, at the cost of around $112 billion — less than 2% of the federal budget.
