Submitted by the Global Food Institute (GFI) at the George Washington University. The Institute connects academics, practitioners, and policymakers to drive meaningful change across the food system through advancing research, fostering exchange, and developing the next generation of food leaders.
Overview
This assessment examines the consequences of the Mayor's FY2027 proposal to eliminate the Food Policy Team within the Office of Planning with a focus on food security and improving the District's food procurement efforts. Given the scope of DC's food-related challenges and the opportunities to leverage DC food policy across agencies for a stronger food environment, the appropriate policy direction is to strengthen and expand this function, not eliminate it.
Food issues — from food assistance and procurement to business development, food access, and food waste — cut across multiple city agencies and jurisdictions. A food policy council exists precisely to coordinate across that landscape, ensuring that community needs, research, and policy are connected rather than siloed. This coordinating function particularly matters in cities like DC, where the food system does not serve all residents equally.
The examples and assessment below are not exhaustive. GFI has highlighted areas closest to our institute's research focus, including food security and procurement. But the Food Policy Team's work spans a much broader range of issues, including emergency food response and food entrepreneurship / small business support.
DC Faces Significant Food Challenges and the Problems Are Not Equally Experienced
Food insecurity, diet-related disease, and inequitable access to healthy food remain entrenched challenges in DC. As of January 2026, approximately 135,000 District residents — 20% of the population — participate in SNAP, receiving $26 million in federal food assistance that month.1 Yet SNAP enrollment captures only a fraction of those in need. According to the Capital Area Food Bank's 2025 Annual Hunger Report, 40% of DC residents report experiencing food insecurity, and more than 820,000 people across the DMV now face food insecurity — an increase of nearly 75,000 per year since 2022.2 As of May 2025, 75,000 more people reported severe food insecurity than in prior years, skipping meals, reducing portions, and cutting children's food intake.3
Grocery access is starkly inequitable. East of the Anacostia River, home to the District's largest share of Black residents, there are only five full-service grocery stores — recently up from four, thanks to the opening of Dreaming Out Loud's Marion Barry Avenue Market in Ward 8. West of the Anacostia, there are more than 75, with Ward 3 alone holding 17.
Diet-related chronic disease tracks the same geography. According to the DC BRFSS 2020 Annual Health Report, 24% of DC adults live with obesity citywide, but that figure rises to 40% in Ward 7 and 49% in Ward 8, compared to just 12% in Ward 3.4 These disparities align with higher burdens of Type II diabetes and heart disease — conditions that are costly to treat and fall disproportionately on the same communities with the least food access. As documented in the January 2025 GWU Redstone Center procurement report, Black DC residents die from heart disease at 2.5 times the rate of white residents, have diabetes at seven times the rate, and experience twice the cancer mortality.5
What the Food Policy Team and Council Have Delivered
The FPC's model begins with systematic community engagement — more than 60 full Council meetings averaging 80 attendees each, engaging more than 10,000 residents in food-focused conversations.6 This is how the team identifies cross-agency and cross-sector problems and opportunities and translates community knowledge into actionable policy. That process has driven a concrete record.
In legislation, the team has informed or directly supported the Farmers Market Support Amendment Act (2025), signed into law July 7, 2025;7 the No Senior Hungry Omnibus Amendment Act (2023); the Green Food Purchasing Amendment Act (2021); the Cottage Food Expansion Act (2020);8 the Save Good Food Act (2019); and the Healthy Students Amendment Act (2018).9 The team also produces the annual Food System Assessment, the DC Food Economy Study, the Food Access and Food Security Report, the Nutrition Education Landscape Assessment (with Howard University), the Make Food Work workforce strategy, and the Assessment of a Central Food Processing Facility.10 No other agency produces this cross-system data, and the statutory requirement to do so would be repealed along with the team.
Beyond legislation and research, the team advocated for and helped design the Nourish DC Collaborative, which provides grants, loans, and technical assistance to DC-based food businesses in underserved communities.11 Its cross-agency relationships also enabled the District's response to the COVID-19 food crisis, the 2025 federal shutdown — where it served as the central SNAP referral site — and the 2026 Snowcrete storm.
Independent research corroborates this record. A 2023 peer-reviewed study assessing 19 major urban food policy councils placed DC's in the top-performing cluster on governance, stakeholder engagement, and food justice activities. Government-affiliated councils like DC's consistently outperformed independent nonprofit models.12
Most Major Cities See the Need for a Food Policy Coordinating Function
DC would be a significant outlier if this proposal were enacted. Research across the 30 most populous US cities finds that roughly 80% — approximately 24–25 cities — maintain some form of food policy council or equivalent body, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Austin, Denver, and Baltimore.13
A 2025 CDC-funded national study found that municipalities with food policy councils had significantly higher odds of having healthy food access policies in place than those without, replicating a 2014 national finding.14 Food system challenges span public health, planning, agriculture, economic development, emergency management, and procurement simultaneously. They do not self-coordinate. They require a dedicated institutional home.
The Challenges Ahead Are Intensifying
The federal safety net backstopping food insecurity in the District is being substantially reduced. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts more than $180 billion from SNAP nationally through 2035. DC will for the first time be required to pay a share of SNAP benefit costs effective October 2027, the administrative cost share will rise from 50% to 75% effective October 2026, and new work documentation requirements now apply to adults up to age 64, with prior exemptions for homeless individuals, veterans, and young adults aging out of foster care eliminated.15 Among DC households that experienced a federal job loss, 41% reported food insecurity — more than double the rate of those who did not.16 The region's extreme food insecurity rate has grown from 16% to 22% of households over four years.17
The Administration has also announced it will terminate the federal government's annual food insecurity report — the primary national data source for tracking hunger at the state and local level.18 This makes the Food Policy Team's annual District-level assessments more essential, not less. Eliminating the team eliminates the primary local monitoring capacity precisely when federal monitoring is being withdrawn.
The Food Policy Council Can Also Lead in Important Areas of Opportunity
The District spends over $62 million annually on food procurement across seven agencies, feeding tens of thousands of children, seniors, and vulnerable residents each day. This spending represents a significant and underutilized opportunity. By directing procurement toward local and regional food businesses, higher nutritional standards, and climate-friendly sourcing, the District could simultaneously improve resident health outcomes, strengthen DC's food economy, support small and minority-owned businesses in underserved communities, and advance its own sustainability commitments — all without new appropriations.
The January 2025 GWU Redstone Center report, produced in partnership with the FPC's Sustainable Supply Chain Working Group, identified 51 systemic problems across the procurement lifecycle and concluded that the current system "makes it nearly impossible for agencies to fulfill their basic legal obligations, let alone any values-based goals they might also hope to achieve." Solicitations routinely omit the District's own legally binding commitments — including the Good Food Purchasing Program, the Green Food Purchasing Act, and the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration. Evaluation panels lack food sector expertise. Payment structures are not tied to performance. The result is a cycle of overpaying and underperformance.19 Among the report's 45 recommendations, the most structurally important is to leverage the Office of Food Policy to incorporate food sector expertise into contracting and centralize oversight of procurement goals — a function the report identifies as having no other institutional home in District government.
The Council itself has recognized this opportunity. Bill 26-444, the Food Policy Council Procurement Amendment Act of 2025, introduced in October 2025 and the subject of a public hearing in March 2026, would expand the FPC's authority to evaluate food procurement practices across District government.20 The Council's own legislative agenda reflects a clear understanding of the FPC's value in this cross-agency work. Simultaneously eliminating the body responsible for carrying it out would be difficult to reconcile.
Conclusion
The District's food system challenges are persistent, racially and socioeconomically stratified, and intensifying. The Food Policy Team and Council have a documented record of translating community knowledge into legislation, research, emergency coordination, and business support — at a cost of $400,000 in a $21 billion budget. Eighty percent of comparable major US cities maintain this function as essential infrastructure. The $62 million food procurement opportunity is independently documented and actionable — and would be aided and facilitated by this team's continued existence.
Eliminating the Food Policy Team and repealing the enabling statute would dismantle the District's only cross-agency food coordination function, eliminate the primary source of food system data serving the Council's oversight role, and remove the institutional home for procurement reform at the moment it is most needed.
Endnotes
1 USDA, https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-persons-4.pdf
2 Capital Area Food Bank, 2025 Annual Hunger Report, https://hunger-report.capitalareafoodbank.org/report-2025/
3 CNN, Severe food insecurity is on the rise in DC area, September 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/25/politics/food-insecurity-washington-dc-federal-cuts
4 DC Health, DC BRFSS 2020 Annual Health Report, https://dchealth.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/doh/publication/attachments/DC%20BRFSS%202020%20Annual%20Health%20Report.pdf
5 GWU Redstone Center, Food Procurement in the District of Columbia: A Weak Link in the Value Chain, January 2025, https://redstone.publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5276/files/2025-02/Values-Based%20Procurement%20Report-Jan%202025.pdf
6 DC Food Policy Council, Stakeholder Overview for FY27 Budget Testimony, 2026
7 DC Food Policy Council, FY2026 Budget Summary, https://dcfoodpolicy.org/2025/08/06/what-is-in-the-fy2026-district-budget-for-dc-food-system/
8 DC Food Policy Council, 2019 Priorities End of Year Update, https://dcfoodpolicy.org/accomplishments-policy/2019-dc-food-policy-priorities/
9 DC Food Policy Council, Legislation Tracker, https://dcfoodpolicy.org/policy/legislation/
10 DC Office of Planning, Food Policy Division, https://planning.dc.gov/food-policy
11 DC Food Access & Equity Working Group, https://dcfoodpolicy.org/working-groups/food-equity-and-access/
12 Sherrill et al., Foods, 2023, https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12091854
13 Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, Food Policy Networks Directory, https://foodpolicynetworks.org/councils/directory/online/
14 Oza-Frank et al., Preventing Chronic Disease, 2025, https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2025/24_0335.htm
15 Capital Area Food Bank, 2025 Annual Hunger Report, https://hunger-report.capitalareafoodbank.org/report-2025/
16 Time, Food Insecurity, Unemployment, DC Layoffs, September 2025, https://time.com/7320514/food-insecurity-unemployment-dc-layoffs-aid-cuts/
17 FFXNow, D.C. region leaders troubled by elevated food insecurity levels, October 2025, https://www.ffxnow.com/2025/10/09/d-c-region-leaders-troubled-by-elevated-food-insecurity-levels-found-in-report/
18 CNN, Severe food insecurity is on the rise in DC area, September 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/25/politics/food-insecurity-washington-dc-federal-cuts
19 GWU Redstone Center, Food Procurement in the District of Columbia, pp. 4–5, https://redstone.publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5276/files/2025-02/Values-Based%20Procurement%20Report-Jan%202025.pdf
20 LegiScan, DC B26-0444, https://legiscan.com/DC/bill/B26-0444/2025