Farm to School Act of 2025
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Sen. Welch, Peter [D-VT]
ID: W000800
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
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5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another brilliant example of congressional incompetence, masquerading as a benevolent attempt to feed America's children. The Farm to School Act of 2025 is a masterclass in bureaucratic doublespeak, designed to make you believe that the government actually cares about your kids' lunch.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's primary objective is to reauthorize and expand the farm-to-school program, which aims to connect schools with local farmers to provide fresh produce for school meals. Sounds noble, but let's not be naive – this is just a vehicle for politicians to pander to their agricultural constituents and line the pockets of special interest groups.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to:
* Redefine terms like "agricultural producer" and "eligible institution" (because, apparently, these definitions were too complicated for our esteemed lawmakers). * Increase funding for grants, technical assistance, research, and evaluation (read: more bureaucratic waste). * Allow the Secretary of Agriculture to waive or modify matching requirements for grant recipients (a clever way to funnel money to favored projects). * Expand the scope of eligible activities to include "educational activities relating to agriculture, nutrition, or food" (because our kids need more indoctrination on the importance of locally sourced kale).
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects:
* Agricultural producers and farmers (who will receive subsidies and grants). * Schools and educational institutions (who will get to participate in this feel-good program). * Lobbyists and special interest groups (who will reap the benefits of increased funding and bureaucratic largesse). * Taxpayers (who will foot the bill for this boondoggle).
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a classic example of "legislative theater" – all show, no substance. The actual impact on America's children will be minimal, while the real beneficiaries will be the special interest groups and politicians who sponsored this bill.
In conclusion, the Farm to School Act of 2025 is a symptom of a deeper disease: the chronic inability of our government to address real problems, instead opting for shallow, feel-good legislation that lines the pockets of the powerful. It's a diagnosis of " Politician-itis" – a condition characterized by an excessive desire for re-election, a lack of intellectual honesty, and a severe case of bureaucratic bloat.
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 303 — Department of Agriculture Accountability Office said results in the USDA not “regularly assess[ing] the pro- grams’ fraud risks,” the NSLP wasted nearly $500 million in FY 2021.89 The SBP now wastes nearly $200 million annually.90 Despite the ongoing effort to expand school meals under CEP and the evidence of waste and inefficiency, left-of-center Members of Congress and President Biden’s Administration have nonetheless proposed further expansions to extend federal school meals to include every K–12 student—regardless of need.91 The Administra- tion recently proposed expanding federal school meal programs offered during the school year to be offered during the summer as part of the “American Families Plan,” and also proposed expanding CEP. Other federal officials, including Senator Bernie Sanders (I–VT), have, in recent years, proposed expanding the NSLP to all students.92 To serve students in need and prevent the misuse of taxpayer money, the next Administration should focus on students in need and reject efforts to transform federal school meals into an entitlement program. Specifically, the next Administration should: l Promulgate a rule properly interpreting CEP. The USDA should issue a rule that clarifies that only an individual school or a school district as a whole, not a subset of schools within a district, must meet the 40-percent criteria to be eligible for CEP. Education officials should be prohibited from grouping schools together. l Work with lawmakers to eliminate CEP. The NSLP and SBP should be directed to serve children in need, not become an entitlement for students from middle- and upper-income homes. Congress should eliminate CEP. Further, the USDA should not provide meals to students during the summer unless students are taking summer-school classes. Currently, students can get meals from schools even if they are not in summer school, which has, in effect, turned school meals into a federal catering program.93 l Restore programs to their original intent and reject efforts to create universal free school meals. The USDA should work with lawmakers to restore NSLP and SBP to their original goal of providing food to K–12 students who otherwise would not have food to eat while at school. Federal school meals should be focused on children in need, and any efforts to expand student eligibility for federal school meals to include all K–12 students should be soundly rejected. Such expansion would allow an inefficient, wasteful program to grow, magnifying the amount of wasted taxpayer resources. Reform Conservation Programs. Farmers, in general, are excellent stewards of the land, if not for moral or ethical considerations, then out of self-interest to — 304 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise make sure their land and—by extension, their livelihoods—remain intact. Farmers are often called the original conservationists.94 When evaluating federal conservation programs, it is important to remember the importance of the land to farmers. In terms of USDA federal conservation programs, both the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) oversee numerous programs.95 As a general matter, the next Administration should ensure that these programs address genuine and specific environmental concerns with a focus on currently existing environmental problems, not those that are speculative in nature. These conservation programs should have clearly identifiable goals, with the success or failure of these programs being directly measurable. Any assistance to farmers to take specific actions should not be provided unless the assistance will directly and clearly help to address a specific environmental problem. Further, any assistance to encourage farmers to engage in certain practices should only be provided if farmers would not have adopted the practices in the first place. There are specific issues that the next Administration should address. The Conservation Reserve Program,96 which is run by FSA, pays farmers to not farm some of their land. This program has recently received attention, as agricultural groups rightfully seek to farm without penalty voluntarily idled land, in light of the consequences to food prices of Russia invading Ukraine.97 There is also a need to reform USDA’s conservation easements. These easements are a powerful tool to incentivize long-term preservation of ecosystems while still allowing farmers to benefit economically. However, when farmers and ranchers sign conservation easements with the USDA, they can be enforced in perpetuity. Future generations, be they the descendants of the landowner or new residents, are bound by those conditions. Ecosystems and topography naturally change over time, but without legislative change, easement requirements will not. The next Administration should: l Champion the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program. Farmers should not be paid in such a sweeping way not to farm their land. If there is a desire to ensure that extremely sensitive land is not farmed, this should be addressed through targeted efforts that are clearly connected to addressing a specific and concrete environmental harm. The USDA should work with Congress to eliminate this overbroad program. l Reform NRCS wetlands and erodible land compliance and appeals. Problematic NRCS overreach could be avoided entirely by removing its authority to prescribe specific practices on a particular farm operation in order to ensure continued eligibility to participate in USDA farm programs,
Introduction
— 351 — Department of Education as the Educational Choice for Children Act. This bill would create a federal scholarship tax credit that would incentivize donors to contribute to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). Eligible families could then use that funding from the SGOs for their children’s education expenses including private school tuition, tutoring, and instructional materials. ADDITIONAL K–12 REFORMS Allowing States to Opt Out of Federal Education Programs. States should be able to opt out of federal education programs such as the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act. Much of the red tape and regulations that hinder local school districts are handed down from Washington. This regulatory burden far exceeds the federal government’s less than 10 percent financing share of K–12 education. In the most recent fiscal year (FY 2022), states and localities financed 93 percent of K–12 education costs, and the federal government just 7 percent. That 7 percent share should not allow the federal government to dictate state and local education policy. l To restore state and local control of education and reduce the bureaucratic and compliance burden, Congress should allow states to opt out of the dozens of federal K–12 education programs authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and instead allow states to put their share of federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law. This policy has been advanced over the years via a proposal known as the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act. HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM HEA: Accreditation Reform Congress established two primary responsibilities for the U.S. Department of Education in the HEA: 1) to ensure the “administrative capacity and financial responsibility” of colleges and universities that accept Title IV funds; and 2) to ensure the quality of those institutions. Congress did not endow the Department of Education with the authority to involve itself in academic quality issues relating to colleges and universities that participate in the Title IV student aid program; the HEA allows the agency only to recognize accreditors, which are then supposed to provide quality assurance measures. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration has followed closely in the footsteps of the Obama Administration by engaging in a politically motivated and incon- sistent administration of the accrediting agency recognition process. As a result, accreditors have transformed into de facto government agents. Despite claims by — 352 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise the department and accreditation agencies that accreditation is voluntary, the fact that Americans are denied access to an otherwise widely available entitle- ment benefit if the institution “elects” to not be accredited makes accreditation anything but voluntary. Today, accreditation determines whether Americans can access federal student aid benefits, transfer academic credits, enroll in higher-level degree programs, and even qualify for federal employment. Unnecessarily focused on schools in a specific geographic region, institutional accreditation reviews have also become wildly expensive audits by academic “peers” that stifle innovation and discourage new institutions of higher education. Of par- ticular concern are efforts by many accreditation agencies to leverage their Title IV (student loans and grants) gatekeeper roles to force institutions to adopt policies that have nothing to do with academic quality assurance and student outcomes. One egregious example of this is the extent to which accreditors have forced col- leges and universities, many of them faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools. Perhaps more distress- ingly, accreditors, while professing support for academic freedom and campus free speech, have presided over a precipitous decline in both over the past decade. Despite maintaining criteria that demand such policies, accreditors have done nothing to dampen the illiberal chill that has swept across American campuses over the past decade. The current system is not working. A radical overhaul of the HEA’s accreditation requirements is thus in order. The next Administration should work with Congress to amend the HEA and should consider the following reforms: l Prohibit accreditation agencies from leveraging their Title IV gatekeeper role to mandate that educational institutions adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. l Protect the sovereignty of states to decide governance and leadership issues for their state-supported colleges and universities by prohibiting accreditation agencies from intruding upon the governance of state-supported educational institutions. l Protect faith-based institutions by prohibiting accreditation agencies from: 1. Requiring standards and criteria that undermine the religious beliefs of, or require policies or conduct that conflict with, the religious mission or religious beliefs of the institution; and
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.