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The Massachusetts FARM Bill needs your support!

Please use this toolkit to reach out to House leadership to ask them to support H.4854, the FARM bill! We need a strong push to get the House to move the bill out of HWM and to the floor for debate – please follow the steps in the toolkit to take action and share this action widely with your networks! The formal session ends on July 31, a rapidly approaching deadline for bills.

Support food system priorities in the environmental bond bill!

The environmental bond bill has been passed by the House and Senate. Now, three members of each chamber; Reps Finn, Barber and Sweezey, and Senators Rausch, Cyr and Durant, have been appointed to a committee to resolve the differences between the proposals. Although the proposals are in alignment on some agricultural programs, they differ on the amount of funding authorized for FSIG, the Healthy Soils Program, the Massachusetts Food Trust Program, and more. The environmental bond bill is only authorized once every five years (the last one was passed in 2018), so this is an important moment to make your voice heard! Please use the Collaborative’s letter as a template, and reach out to Becca with any questions.

Collaborate

State Legislative update The end of the legislature’s formal session on July 31 is rapidly approaching. Under the legislature’s rules, this means bills have to be passed by both chambers and assigned to a conference committee to still be considered alive to be passed by the end of the calendar year. Please follow the steps in the calls to action above to support the FARM bill and food system priorities in the environmental bond bill! On June 12, Governor Healey signed a farmer tax credit into law! This tax credit, up to $5,0000 for farmers and aquaculture producers who donate edible food and crops to hunger relief nonprofit organizations, was part of a larger supplemental budget. Now, we are waiting for the Department of Revenue, in partnership with the Mass. Department of Agricultural Resources, to share guidance on how this will be implemented. In the meantime, we suggest farmers save any receipts that track donations to food pantries or other hunger-relief organizations. In the late evening of June 30, 2026, the fiscal year 2027 budget conference committee report was released. This budget proposal was passed by the House and Senate on July 1, and is now with the Governor for her review, any vetos, and her signature. The Collaborative appreciates the leadership of Chairs Michlewitz and Rodrigues, Vice-Chair Comerford, and Senate President Spilka and Speaker Mariano is creating this budget that continues to support the local food system. The final proposal (pending any vetos from the Governor) includes; $21.5 million for HIP, plus a commitment to carry forward $9 million of unspent funds from FY26 for a total of $30.5 million available in FY27, $1 million for food literacy ($750,000 for the FRESH grant program, $150,000 for the School Wellness Coaching Program, and $100,000 for curricula and resource development), $250,000 for the local food policy council grant program, and $20 million for the Disaster Relief and Resiliency Fund. Unfortunately, the budget includes a $500,000 cut to MDAR’s administrative budget, underfunds DTA’s caseworker line item, and does not include a state-funded LFPA program. We are concerned about these cuts impacts on the state agencies and are working with our statewide anti-hunger partners to address the SNAP access crisis. Thank you to the hundreds of partners who took action during this budget cycle to make the impact of these programs known. Our collective work is powerful, and results in real progress. The chart below includes additional programs that are the priorities of our partners.

Celebrate

Public Servant of the Month: DESE’s Nutrition Education and School Wellness Training team in the Office for Food and Nutrition Programs. The Nutrition Education and School Wellness Training team at DESE, made up of Denise Courtney, Kelly Burke, and Maggie Nowak, works to support high quality school nutrition programs, including ensuring access to healthy food, uplifting local food, and championing food education. The team manages programs including training for School Nutrition Professionals, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, Terrific Tray, FRESH grant program, Northeast Food for Schools Challenge, Local School Wellness Policies, and more. Since fiscal year 2023, the Department has implemented $1 million from the state budget annually in food system education, awarding FRESH grants to more than sixty schools and early education programs, working with the John Stalker Institute and RootEd to deliver more than 500 additional hours of food literacy professional development across fourteen distinct course offerings, and providing school wellness policy coaching to more than sixty school districts. FNP staff continue to work across departments, state agencies, and with additional partners to expand resources and offerings that support food education and the local food system.

Discover

New Climate Disaster Relief report details additional policies needed for farm safety net

When Disaster Becomes the Norm, a new report from the Northeast Climate Disaster Relief Network and FarmAid, was released in June. The white paper explores the ways climate change impacts agriculture, and how inadequate our current farm safety net is when it comes to helping farmers recover from climate disasters. The white paper provides case studies and recommendations for policymakers to address this problem. This is a timely paper as the state begins to draft how the Disaster Relief and Resiliency Fund will be deployed, which covers losses from agriculture, as well as municipalities and other businesses. Read the white paper here.

In the late evening of June 30, 2026, the fiscal year 2027 budget conference committee report was released. This budget proposal was passed by the House and Senate on July 1, and was signed into law by the Governor on July 9, 2026 with no vetos or changes. The Collaborative appreciates the leadership of Chairs Michlewitz and Rodrigues, Vice-Chair Comerford, and Senate President Spilka and Speaker Mariano is creating this budget that continues to support the local food system.

The final proposal (pending any vetos from the Governor) includes; $21.5 million for HIP, plus a commitment to carry forward $9 million of unspent funds from FY26 for a total of $30.5 million available in FY27, $1 million for food literacy ($750,000 for the FRESH grant program, $150,000 for the School Wellness Coaching Program, and $100,000 for curricula and resource development), $250,000 for the local food policy council grant program, and $20 million for the Disaster Relief and Resiliency Fund. The budget also includes $55 million for MEFAP funding for food banks, and $180 million for universal free school meals. Unfortunately, the budget includes a $500,000 cut to MDAR’s administrative budget, and significantly underfunds DTA’s caseworker line item at a time when acess to DTA has plummeted, decreasing access to SNAP for tens of thousands of residents. The budget also does not include a state-funded LFPA program, despite the work of dozens of partners this spring who MAFSC organized a Lobby Day and multiple call-in days with to advocate for this funding. We are concerned about these cuts impacts on the state agencies and are working with our statewide anti-hunger partners to address the SNAP access crisis. Thank you to the hundreds of partners who took action during this budget cycle to make the impact of these programs known. Our collective work is powerful, and results in real progress.

On June 17th, the House passed H.5510, the Mass Ready Act, also known as the environmental bond bill. The EBB is introduced and passed by the legislature once every five years (the last one was passed in 2018). Bond bills authorize funding amounts for the state to fund capital grant programs. The EBB was first introduced by the Governor in July 2025, and hearings on the proposal were held by the Committees on Environment and Natural Resources and Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets before being referred to Senate Ways and Means in January 2026, passed by the Senate in April, and then referred to House Ways and Means.

The bond bill as released from House Ways and Means mirrors the Senate and Administration’s proposal with some additions:

• $150M authorization for the Food Security Infrastructure Grant program – a $25M increase from the Senate and Adminsitration
• $26M authorization for CSAP, FVEP, urban agriculture, compost, food safety, Farmland Plan implementation, plus a commitment to carry forward $26.3M of unspent funds from the 2018 environmental bond bill
• $42M authorization for APR, plus a commitment to carry forward $18M of unspent funds from the 2018 environmental bond bill
• An outside section (3) that will distribute the $1 million milk producers security fund and subsequently close the fund.
• An outside section (5 and 6) that adds UMass Extension and the Division of Marine Fisheries to the Massachusetts Food Policy Council.
• An outside section (20) that grants MDAR a right of first refusal, positioned behind a municipality’s, on agricultural land protected under Chapter 61A when it comes up for sale. This is a critical step toward slowing the rate of farmland loss.
• An outside section (48 and 49) that modernizes animal commercial feed regulations.

The House did not include specific earmarks for the Healthy Soils and Mass Food Trust Programs, unlike the Senate. The Healthy Soils program is included in general in a larger line item, it is not zero’d out.

During debate, amendments relating to the food system that were adopted include:

• ATV bill
• A port development commission

Amendments that were not adopted that the Collaborative supported:

• An amendment sponsored by Agriculture Committee Chair Aaron Saunders to create a working capital loan program, to be administered by MDAR in partnership with a CDFI or similarly qualified institution.
• An amendment sponsored by Representative Arena-DeRosa to ban the land application of sludge and create a PFAS Relief Fund for farmers, capitalized with $50 million.
• An amendment sponsored by Representative Duffy to authorize $5 million for the urban agriculture grant program.
• An amendment sponsored by Representative Sylvia to capitalize MDAR’s new Buy-Protect-Sell authority with $10 million.

The differences between the House and Senate bond proposals must now be worked out by a conference committee, and the proposal will then be sent to the Governor for her signature. We will share an update on how to write to the conference committee soon. Bond authorizations are then drawn down into capital budgets (or capital improvement plans), which are set by the Governor’s Administration on an annual or 2 year basis.