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Basic page Study Series: School Meal Program Operations

We have studied school meal program operations for a long time. You can access published reports that go back to school year 1988-89. Each study in this series focuses on topics that are important to program operations at the time. Sometimes the studies also collect information about other child nutrition programs, like the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program.

03/24/2026
Resource | Research and Data School Meal Program Operations, School Year 2022-23

We regularly collect information about the school meal programs and how they operate from the people who know best – the state agencies that oversee the programs in each state and territory and the school food authorities that manage the programs locally in one or more schools. 

03/24/2026
Resource | Policy Proposed Information Collection: Comment Request - WIC Breastfeeding Award of Excellence

This collection is a revision of a currently approved collection for awarding local agencies for excellence in WIC breastfeeding services and support. The Child Nutrition Act of 1966 requires that the Department of Agriculture establish a program to recognize WIC local agencies and clinics that demonstrate exemplary breastfeeding promotion and support activities.

03/11/2026
Resource | Policy Incorporating Local Beef into Child Nutrition Program Meals

As part of Secretary Rollins’ commitment to support American beef and create healthy outcomes for American children, the Farm to School Program is committed to working with CNP operators to help them source and serve local in program meals.

02/19/2026
Resource | Policy Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 – Promoting Real Food in Child Nutrition Programs

In this program guidance, Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke L. Rollins, strongly encourages child nutrition program operators to familiarize themselves with the key recommendations and consider how the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 can be incorporated into program meals and snacks to promote healthy outcomes and healthy families.

02/11/2026
Resource | Research and Data Evaluation of the Healthy Fluid Milk Incentives Project, Fiscal Years 2021, 2022, and 2023

The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out Healthy Fluid Milk Incentives projects to develop and test methods to increase the purchase and consumption of fluid milk of SNAP households by providing incentives at the point of purchase. The Act requires biennial reporting on the status of projects and completed evaluations. The findings for the FY 2020 award were presented in the first report to Congress. This second report presents findings from the FY 2021, FY 2022 and FY 2023 pilot projects.
 

01/15/2026
Data Visualization
WIC Breastfeeding Data Local Agency Dashboard

The Child Nutrition Act requires USDA to annually compile and publish breastfeeding performance measurements. We use this data to monitor breastfeeding trends and to help identify exemplary performance of WIC state and local agencies in breastfeeding and make awards to such agencies.

01/15/2026
Resource | Policy Correcting Amendments - WIC: Implementation of the Access to Baby Formula Act of 2022 and Related Provisions

On Dec. 14, 2023, we published a final rule that went into effect on Feb. 12, 2024. In reviewing the resulting changes to the Code of Federal Regulations, we found that the final rule inadvertently omitted provisions from the CFR and contained several non-substantive errors. This document corrects those errors in the WIC regulations.

12/17/2025
Resource | Policy WIC Policy Memo #2026-1: Temporary Increase to the Maximum Monthly Allowance of Fluid Milk

On Nov. 12, 2025, President Trump signed the Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 into law. Section 787 of the Act directs USDA to update the maximum monthly allowance of fluid milk for certain food packages provided in the WIC program.

12/05/2025
Resource | Policy Information Collection Comment Request: SNAP-Ed State Plan and Annual Report System

This collection is a revision of a currently approved collection for the electronic reporting forms, SNAP-Ed Annual Report (Form FNS-925A) and SNAP-Ed State Plan (Form FNS-925B), as required in the 2018 Farm Bill.

09/03/2025
Page updated: October 14, 2021