Committee on Agriculture
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative:
On behalf of our 3 million members and the 50 million students they educate and support, we urge you to vote NO on the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, H.R. 7567. Additionally, we urge you to SUPPORT all amendments that restore and improve the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and OPPOSE all amendments that further weaken SNAP. Votes on this bill may be included in the NEA Report Card on the 119th Congress.
H.R. 7567 coupled with H.R. 1’s devastating cuts to SNAP will mean more children will go hungry.
Educators support a Farm Bill that reflects our recommendations from 2024 that would strengthen SNAP to better serve the many people who depend on it, such as removing limits on how long recipients can receive benefits and extending benefits to college students in need. Yet, the Farm Bill text released by House Republicans completely disregards those recommendations and fails to recognize the depth of hunger and food insecurity in our nation.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Household Food Security report, published in December 2025, revealed that nearly 48 million people were in food-insecure households in 2024. The report showed that the number of children living in such households increased from 13.8 million in 2023 to more than 14 million in 2024.
H.R. 7567 ignores the severity of these findings, which will only get worse. Because of the SNAP cuts included in H.R. 1, millions of families were already slated to lose SNAP benefits, while the program will become more expensive for states due to the cost-shifting provisions in H.R. 1.
The cuts—the largest in the history of SNAP—will also impact children’s access to free school meals, because children in households that receive SNAP benefits are automatically certified for free school meals. Without automatic certification, schools will return to an inefficient and outmoded method of individually certifying each child. This places a costly administrative burden on schools and creates additional complex paperwork for families that are already struggling to keep their heads above water.
The fallout does not end there. Lower SNAP participation could mean fewer schools qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows certain schools in high-poverty areas to serve free school meals to all students. Congress can still reverse course before these cascading effects occur, but time is running out.
Educators know that when children are hungry, they cannot focus on learning or engage in the classroom. You have the opportunity to address the reality of hunger and food insecurity in America. We urge you to protect hungry children by voting NO on the Farm Bill, and to OPPOSE amendments within the bill that weaken SNAP and SUPPORT amendments that strengthen it.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Johnson Trinca
Director of Government Relations
National Education Association
