Orly Levy is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Food Insecurity in Higher Education The next farm bill provides a legislative opportunity to tackle food insecurity amongst college students through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). While the exact numbers are unclear, many low-income college students don’t have enough…
Marisa Koontz is a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She is a guest contributor to this blog. On June 3, President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, H.R. 3746 (also known as the debt ceiling deal), into law after weeks of negotiations. These negotiations took place under a pressure cooker…
Kipper Berven is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a Farm Bill provision that profoundly impacts the health and wellness of millions of Americans. Today roughly 34 million Americans live in food-insecure households, and a recent survey by the U.S. Department of…
Emily Hatch is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 15, 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its most recent budget baseline for “USDA Farm Programs,” which projects a ten-year baseline cost for the relevant farm bill programs of over $1.4 trillion (about $140 billion each fiscal…
Alyssa Huang is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 16, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry held a hearing to talk about Nutrition Programs in the Farm Bill. The committee invited two witnesses—Stacy Dean, the Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services at…
Codi Coulter is a law student at Maryland Carey School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 13.5 million U.S. households faced food insecurity at some point in 2021. Households with children, single households, people of color, and low-income households, as well as households in cities, experienced higher rates of food…
The 2023 Farm Bill presents an opportunity for the Biden Administration to address some of the key restrictions on the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) that prevent those most in need of assistance from accessing the program. SNAP represents one of the most successful and essential parts of federal food assistance. USDA research indicates that SNAP reduces food insecurity among…
On a recent Saturday, my co-worker and I spent an unsuccessful five minutes trying to get a Healthy Incentives Program (HIP, a nutrition incentive program in Massachusetts) transaction to go through. We both work at a farmers market selling fruits and vegetables from a farm in upstate Massachusetts. The customer knew that she had $40 in HIP left (the full…
Oscar Heanue is a law student in the Food Law & Policy Clinic of Harvard Law School and guest contributor on this blog. Thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Online Purchasing Pilot, participants in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) are now able to use their benefits online for the first time in the program’s history. However, although…
Hannah Yang is a law student at NYU School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service’s mission is “to increase food security and reduce hunger.” As part of its mission, it oversees the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or reduced lunch for eligible students while school is in session. The Summer…