'People Are Going To Need These:' Amy Klobuchar Advocates For School Meals Programs

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During Tuesday's Senate Agricultural Committee hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar advocated for school meals programs.   Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:   https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript    Stay Connected  Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes  Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes  Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes  More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00well thank you very much thank you chairman for holding this hearing thanks

00:06to our witnesses who have traveled to share their perspectives on child

00:13nutrition programs of what's working and what we can do to improve them I have

00:18long supported the whole milk for Healthy Kids Act thank you Senator

00:22Marshall and this hearing is an important opportunity to underscore the

00:29importance of school nutrition and threats to their success ensuring kids

00:34have access to nutrition foods at school is a win-win a win for kids a win for

00:39schools and a win for our farmers who provide healthy and nutritious foods I

00:45will note there's kind of a perfect storm going on right now with the tariffs which

00:50I oppose these proposed tariffs with input costs with weather which is not in our

00:57control whether it's floods whether it's tornadoes and then of course with the

01:03chaos right now with cuts and with people being terminated and then rehired with

01:09avian flu when I'm out there I just did a 14 county rural tour including several

01:16smaller small town town halls with the farmers union and I really got a sense of

01:22where people are coming from and they aren't activists their regular farmers

01:27ranchers mostly small farmers and it's a lot going on and so I would just point

01:32out that as one of our witnesses today mr. Gorman has said the funding that we put

01:38into school meals is some of the best money that we spend not only do school meal

01:44programs reduce hunger and promote learning they also support our local farmers

01:49and ranchers at a time when it's probably the very worst time I've seen in decades

01:55to step away from that because the economy is getting to be a much more

01:59volatile than it was a few months ago that means people are going to need these

02:03programs like the snap program and then you also have the farmers and ranchers

02:07that are getting headwinds at them on many different fronts over the last

02:12decade we've made significant improvements to child nutrition then

02:17nutrition quality of school lunch and school breakfast has improved and at the

02:21same time we have worked to streamline school meal programs community

02:26eligibility has been a tremendous success eliminating burdensome red tape while

02:31increasing the number of schools offering meals in the 2023-24 school year

02:37nearly 48,000 schools with 23.6 million students participated community

02:45eligibility has played a key role in allowing Minnesota to offer meals for

02:49children to provide meals to all kids in our state Minnesota chips in state funds

02:55on top of the federal reimbursements to allow every school to offer meals at this

03:01committee looks at federal child nutrition programs we should ensure changes to

03:06the programs improve them rather than take away nutritious foods from kids

03:10across the country unfortunately schools charities and food banks across the

03:16country are facing a loss of these fresh nutritious foods because of USDA's

03:20recent cancellation of local food purchase agreement and local food for

03:25school funds in Minnesota for example schools will lose significant funding for

03:30local commodities and farmers like one livestock operator I heard from are losing

03:35critical domestic markets at a same time when retaliatory tariffs as I just noted are costing farmers and

03:42ranchers greatly across global markets and the cancellation of additional anti-hunger

03:48funding will only exacerbate food insecurity one federal or our federal nutrition programs

03:54are intended to work together addressing hunger both in school and at home I led my

03:59colleagues in demanding answers about the recent cut to local emergency food providers if

04:05local charities and food pantries cannot meet the needs of the growing number of

04:09food insecure kids school food programs will be asked to do more to ensure our kids

04:15aren't going hungry not less in the house cuts to school meal programs through

04:20reconciliation are on the table as the house AG committees 230 billion dollar cut

04:28likely to nutrition programs like snap would be devastating to child nutrition snap is

04:33also our largest child nutrition program serving 15.5 million children in 2022 cuts

04:40to snap will also have a direct impact on school meals many kids participating in

04:45school meals actually do so through snap so cuts to snap are also cuts for school

04:51meals and recent proposals to cut snap would have kicked nearly a million kids off

04:56of child nutrition well we can continue to make improvements to our school

05:00nutrition programs and I hope we will have those discussions in the context of a

05:04farm bill which we so sorely need we shouldn't enjoy ignore the progress we

05:09have made and we can't pretend that the cuts that are currently on the table won't

05:14stop that progress dead in the tracks I hope that we can all agree that we

05:20should first do no harm and then build upon what's working with that I look very

05:25forward to hearing from the witnesses thank you mr. chairman

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