On Sunday, June 30, the New York City Council voted to approve the final Fiscal Year 2025 budget with a $112.4 billion investment. After months of tough negotiations and threats of concerning cuts, we appreciate all the work that the City Council, our community partners and fellow advocates put in to keep pressure on the need for the budget to prioritize a strong local food system.

Throughout this budget season, Equity Advocates and the NYC Food Policy Alliance uplifted the urgent need to reverse harmful cuts and ensure everyone in our city will be able to put food on their tables. While the final budget was saved from the most concerning threats, it is frustrating to note few additional investments in strengthening our local food systems. We hope that in future budget cycles we do not need to play the same negotiating dance with critical funds.

We were pleased to see the FY25 Adopted Budget restore funding for frontline emergency food providers, community gardeners and composters. Persistent advocacy resulted in the restoration of:

$31.9 million restored for Community Food Connections so that emergency food providers can provide access to healthy, fresh, and culturally and religiously appropriate food.

$2.6 million restored for GreenThumb to provide essential resources for community gardeners.
$6.2 million restored for community composting to reduce waste, create local jobs, and move toward the City’s Zero Waste goals.

Other crucial food systems investments in this budget include:

$150 million in capital funding to fully scale cafeteria redesign to reach ALL NYC middle and high students.
An additional $1 per meal for the Home Delivered Meals for Older Adults program, bringing the new per meal rate up to $13.78/meal.
$289.4 million (including $11M for metro cards) for the Summer Youth Employment Program
Maintain Council anti-hunger initiatives at a total of $9.943 million, including the Food Access and Benefits Initiative ($1.5 million), Access to Healthy Food and Nutritional Education Initiative ($2.175 million), and adding $1M to the Food Pantries Initiative ($8.26M).
Maintain Community Land Trust Initiative ($1.5 million) and Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative ($3.768 million).

In total, the final budget deal contained over $531.4 million for programs in the budget that Equity Advocates advocated for in partnership with the NYC Food Policy Alliance. These moderate successes and our advocacy would not be possible without the leadership and collaboration of our community partners within the NYC Food Policy Alliance. We look forward to continuing to work with the City Council and Mayor’s Office to ensure that these investments in the food system and human services nonprofits are successfully implemented and administered with the input of experts within the food nonprofit community.

*We will continue to analyze the budget documents and update this analysis as we learn more details.