President’s Budget: Proposed Cuts to Child Nutrition Grants and Training
June 11, 2025
The White House released the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2026, which includes cuts to discretionary spending for Child Nutrition Programs (CNPs). While the budget maintains full funding for Child Nutrition Programs, like the CACFP and SFSP, the cuts to discretionary spending include the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant and the Institute for Child Nutrition (ICN), a National Ally of NCA.
Why It Matters
Congress has the final say on the FY26 budget, but the President’s Budget serves as a recommendation that can help guide their decisions. Cuts to discretionary spending would have a negative impact on child nutrition programs. For example, ICN provides a significant amount of nutrition education training to operators of CNPs. Similarly, the Farm to School Grant program helps CNP operators purchase and include local foods in their menus, without it programs may not be able to purchase locally. Therefore, loss of funding for these two programs will cut critical education resources for CNPs and make it more difficult for CNPs to serve whole foods that are locally grown.
Farm to School
The USDA awards competitive Farm to School grants that support planning, developing and implementing farm to school and farm to CACFP programs. The President’s Budget eliminates $5 million in FY26 Farm to School discretionary funds. This follows the cancellation of the FY25 grant competition in which USDA stated that they plan to have an improved grant competition for FY26 – which will be difficult to achieve with reduced funding.
The Farm to School grant provides a critical opportunity for child nutrition program operators to incorporate local food and agricultural education into their programs. This funding aligns with the goals outlined in the administrations Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment which highlighted the need to, “put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.” However, without additional funding from federal grant programs like Farm to School, Child Nutrition Programs are limited in their ability to purchase local foods, which are often more expensive to procure.
Institute of Child Nutrition
The Institute of Child Nutrition is a National Ally of the National CACFP Association. The President’s Budget eliminates $1 million for the Institute of Child Nutrition to produce training for CNPs. USDA funding enables the Institute to deliver technical assistance, research and workforce development resources to child nutrition professionals across all 50 states and 6 U.S. territories.
Nutrition education resources are often cited as one of the greatest benefits of participation in the CACFP. Child and adult care providers rely on nutrition education from organizations like ICN to gain the knowledge they need to be successful in the program – as many join the food program without a prior education of nutrition best practices. The Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment also calls out the Dietary Guidelines as being too difficult for the typical American to comprehend. ICN is one of the organizations making nutrition education accessible and understandable to the average child and adult care operator, so cutting their funding would go against the goals of the MAHA Commission.
NCA Supports Full Discretionary Funding for CNPs
The Board of Directors of the National CACFP Association opposes any cuts to discretionary funding for Child Nutrition Programs. NCA recognizes the importance of nutrition education and funding for local foods in ensuring that operators are able to provide the most nutritious meals possible to those in their care.
For more information contact policy@cacfp.org.