Food for Thought: Funding the National School Lunch Program While Simultaneously Providing Tax Incentives to Farmers

This note will focus primarily on the National School Lunch Program (“NSLP”) and propose a solution aimed at reducing the costs of implementing it. It begins with a historical background into how the NSLP came to be and the various adaptations and programs that came out of it. This note then covers current programs and organizations that have arisen to support nutritional education and provide healthy meals to school children. It then compares several contribution-based tax incentive programs, which serve as inspiration for the final proposed tax incentive program for farmers in the closing section. Through the years, rising costs have increased the financial burden of the NSLP and increased the stresses faced by families providing meals for their school-age children. At the same time, farmers experience extreme difficulties in providing food goods while trying to break even for the year, often working without taking any pay for themselves. Reducing the tax burden of farmers through a contribution-based tax incentive program in support of the NSLP, may reduce the cost of providing school meals while simultaneously supporting farmers and contributing to the nutritional support of our nation’s school children. This proposal seeks to pair the nation’s agricultural output from farmers with the supply needs of the NSLP in a way that is beneficial to both groups.