As farmers market season kicks off, we celebrate farmers markets for supporting Secretary Brooke Rollins’ priorities to connect American farmers to our nutrition assistance programs.

This memorandum seeks to ensure that current Food and Nutrition Service guidance pertaining to federal civil rights and nondiscrimination obligations remains aligned with applicable laws, regulations, executive orders and directives relevant to the agency’s 16 nutrition assistance programs.

The information reporting and recordkeeping requirements are necessary to ensure appropriate and efficient management of both programs.

This is a new information collection for the Waivers and State Plans (WiSP) application.

This notice sets forth the interpretation that the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses for the term “Federal public benefit” as used in Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. In doing so, this notice supersedes any prior interpretation in any notice or other document issued by any USDA agency. This notice also describes and preliminarily identifies the USDA programs that provide “Federal public benefits” within the scope of PRWORA.

I write you today to share my guiding principles regarding nutrition programs, and to encourage states to partner with us as innovative collaborators and policy incubators. Gone are the days of the status quo; today starts a new chapter for the Department, states, territories, tribal communities, and each who render or receive nutrition programs.

This guidance is intended to assist state agencies and program operators of the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program in meeting the longstanding federal requirement to collect race and ethnicity data of program participants.

This guidance provides resources that state agencies may use when considering next steps and set forth instructions for submitting state plan amendments that involve operational changes such as electronic solution proposals and/or WIC FMNP waiver requests.