After the Signature

The end of a legislative session is a moment to reflect on what was accomplished, but the signing of bills into law is only the beginning. What comes after matters just as much, because the value of policy is ultimately what is felt in people’s lives.

That value can look like a student starting the school day with a nutritious meal, a family stretching CalFresh benefits further on fresh produce, a farmer keeping land in production, a small business competing under fairer rules to bring greater affordability, or ranchers gaining practical tools to coexist with local wildlife.

California’s 2026 legislative session and budget cycle brought meaningful progress across many of the issues our team and partners have worked on for years. Some measures preserve programs already demonstrating clear value, others create new tools, and some mark a first step toward the scale of action still needed.

The next test is implementation: whether these policies reach the people they were designed to serve with the intended effect, and translate into lasting impact.

Making healthy food easier to access

In 2021, California committed to providing access to free breakfast and lunch for every public school student, regardless of family income. Since implementing School Meals for All, California schools have served nearly 3.5 billion meals, and the state now offers two free meals each school day to its nearly 6 million public school students. While federal money has always supported school nutrition programs, California’s investment leverages those dollars to extend universal access like never before.

Those numbers are enormous, but the value of School Meals for All is much more personal. Hunger makes it harder for students to concentrate, learn, and succeed, while research on school meal programs has found benefits for attendance, academic performance, and behavior. Universal meals make nutritious meals part of the school day for every student – without additional applications, bills, or stigma.

Our team has worked closely alongside a broad coalition of partners, including the American Heart Association, California Food Banks, the Center for Ecoliteracy, NextGen Policy, and over 200 organizations supporting that vision. From the start, this coalition recognized that healthy school meals help set the trajectory of a child’s lifelong health and relationship with food.

As we celebrate the five-year anniversary of the passage of School Meals for All, the conversation is moving beyond access alone to what is served, where it comes from, and how California’s purchasing power can improve health outcomes, support local farmers, rebuild precious topsoils, and reinvigorate local economies.

That same connection drives Market Match, which gives CalFresh recipients additional dollars to buy California-grown fruits and vegetables. The 2026–27 budget included $15 million for the California Nutrition Incentive Program, which funds Market Match and other nutrition incentives. In 2025, Market Match distributed $10.9 million to more than 674,000 shoppers at 269 locations statewide. This investment reflects sustained advocacy by a statewide coalition led by the Ecology Center, with support from partners including the Agricultural Institute of Marin, Alchemist CDC, the California Association of Farmers’ Markets, Roots of Change, and NextGen Policy.

That is what thoughtful public investment can do: help families stretch limited food budgets while creating additional demand and revenue for California farmers. That same systems approach can be seen in California’s broader efforts to turn organic waste into resources like free compost that can be returned to agricultural soils, strengthening both waste reduction and farm resilience.

Access also depends on whether communities have places to buy healthy food in the first place. AB 1857, authored by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and sponsored by the California Food and Farming Network, gives communities a new tool to remove restrictive covenants that prevent grocery stores from opening at former supermarket sites, where existing infrastructure can make it easier for a new grocer to move in.

The state is also looking beyond access alone through AB 2244, which creates a voluntary “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified” food standard. Ultra-processed foods make up more than half of calories consumed in the U.S., and higher consumption has been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other adverse health outcomes. The new standard is intended to give consumers clearer information about what they’re consuming, as research and understanding around nutrition continue to evolve.

Together, these efforts point toward a more connected approach to food policy – one that considers nutrition, affordability, purchasing, healthy soils, water stewardship, and agricultural opportunity as parts of the same holistic system.

Keeping small farmers farming

For California’s small farmers and ranchers, stability can be hard to come by amid rising land and production costs, changing climate conditions, and markets where losing even one reliable buyer can have immediate consequences.

That vulnerability became especially visible when expected federal funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program (LFPA), known in California as Farms Together, disappeared. The program connects local and regional farmers with demand from food banks and other community food purchasers.

Following advocacy from the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Fresh Approach, and the small producers they represent, the Legislature provided $15 million to keep Farms Together operating for another year.

That investment preserves more than transactions. Programs like Farms Together rely on relationships among growers, aggregators, distributors, and food-assistance organizations that take years to build, but remain vulnerable to unreliable funding.

Keeping agricultural land in production is another piece of that stability. California’s 2026–27 budget provides $50 million for the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALC), which helps protect croplands and rangelands from conversion while supporting the long-term viability of working farms and ranches. That investment also reflects coordinated advocacy led by American Farmland Trust and CalCAN, which helped drive the effort to protect continued funding for SALC.

For producers facing development pressure and rising operating costs, conservation tools can help keep land in agriculture while creating financial flexibility to reinvest in their operations.

Keeping farmers farming also means ensuring producers have a meaningful voice in the institutions whose decisions affect them. Another bill, AB 52, authorizes the Secretary of Food and Agriculture to establish advisory committees focused on BIPOC and small-scale producers, creating a direct channel for input on programs, policies, outreach, and technical assistance.

Ultimately, while markets, land, and decision-making power are all different challenges, they are deeply connected for the farmers striving to build durable businesses and a strong, resilient state.

Building markets and leveling the playing field

That same principle extends beyond agriculture. Helping entrepreneurs and small businesses start and grow matters, but so do the rules of the markets they enter.

California’s COMPETE Act (AB 1776) updates the state’s Cartwright Act to prohibit certain anticompetitive conduct by a single firm, giving public antitrust enforcers an additional tool to protect competition, workers, consumers, and businesses. The bill was championed by Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry, alongside advocates working to strengthen California’s tools for addressing anticompetitive conduct.

The legal mechanics are technical, but the question is not: What circumstances are required to create fair and meaningful competition for all businesses in a marketplace? Now California can build a stronger jurisprudence on antitrust and anti-monopolistic behavior to restore that level playing field.

Access to capital, technical assistance, and customers can only go so far if monopolistic firms use market power to keep competitors from gaining a foothold. AB 1776 creates another tool for addressing unfair competition and the lack of affordability it inflicts on all Californians.

Giving communities better means for coexistence

Not every advance this year came with everything advocates sought, but gaining and protecting toeholds matters and protects future achievements.

California communities are increasingly navigating interactions among people, livestock, and wildlife. This year, SB 1135, supported by both wildlife stewardship and agricultural organizations, re-established a statewide Wildlife Coexistence Program focused on managing and reducing human-wildlife conflict. The state also provided $6 million this year for coexistence and wolf-related programs, including livestock compensation.

The investment falls short of the larger, sustained funding advocates sought for a comprehensive statewide system, but re-establishing the program creates a framework to build from and reflects an important shift toward giving communities practical tools to prevent conflict rather than responding only after damage occurs.

The work after the signature

Legislative progress is often measured in bills passed, dollars allocated, and programs funded, but the more meaningful test is how those policies improve people’s lives.

A school-meals program matters when a child eats, and the food is unabashedly healthy. Nutrition incentives matter when a family can afford and buys more fresh food. Agricultural funding matters when a farmer can access solid, diversified end markets and can keep working the land. An advisory committee matters when the people affected by policy have a meaningful role in shaping it. An antitrust law matters when markets become more competitive and market players more democratized. Wildlife funding matters when communities can thrive within the natural systems.

Policy creates tools, and implementation plus honest measurement demonstrates whether those tools work and will scale the benefits.

For our team and the partners we work alongside, that means helping turn policy into functioning systems, listening to the people those systems are intended to serve, protecting what is working, and identifying where implementation falls short.

California put important pieces in place this year – now continues the all-important work after the signature.