Classroom gardens across Los Angeles are going quiet just as students get ready to head back to school.
A long-running program that taught local schoolchildren how to grow and cook fresh vegetables has been quietly shut down, leaving teachers and parents scrambling. Catholic Charities of Los Angeles’ CalFresh Healthy Living urban agriculture team, which ran hands-on lessons and neighborhood food projects, wrapped operations this week, organizers say. The result is a patchwork of volunteers and unpaid caretakers trying to keep gardens alive without any clear long-term plan.
Why Funding Vanished
The shutdown traces back to federal policy changes passed last year. On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the budget reconciliation law that eliminated required funding for SNAP-Ed, the federal nutrition-education arm of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. After that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service instructed state agencies to notify the federal office if they planned to close their fiscal year 2025 SNAP-Ed grants or return unspent funds.
According to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, states that choose to spend their FY2025 SNAP-Ed funds in FY2026 must submit an annual plan. States that do not are expected to wind down grant activity.
CalFresh Healthy Living Ends in California
California’s official CalFresh Healthy Living website now states that the statewide SNAP-Ed program "will end by June 30, 2026" and that the site is no longer being updated, signaling a full phaseout is underway. You can see that notice on CalFresh Healthy Living.
In Los Angeles, Catholic Charities was one of the local implementers of CalFresh Healthy Living. Its urban gardening and nutrition-education work has now been formally halted, and a team that once numbered as many as 13 staffers has been reduced to no paid staff at all, according to reporting in The Nation.
What Los Angeles Is Losing
In 2024, CalFresh Healthy Living reached roughly 174,380 people in Los Angeles County and distributed about 1.68 million pounds of produce, according to LA Public Press. Those numbers are not small potatoes.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office notes that California previously received about $132 million a year to support nutrition-education activities before that funding was ended by the federal law that included H.R.1. The office also details broader state impacts of the bill in a separate report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Anton van Schaik, a 25-year-old urban agriculture assistant who taught students across Highland Park and South LA, told The Nation that helping children interact with produce they had grown "was a real privilege." He said he left his post on June 12 as staff pivoted to winding down operations and training volunteers to tend beds over the summer.
Policy Snapshot
The broader rollback to SNAP and related programs is already visible in enrollment data. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that SNAP participation fell by more than 4 million people between H.R.1’s July 2025 enactment and March 2026, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The law’s nutrition provisions are also projected to significantly shrink federal spending. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that those provisions will reduce federal spending by nearly $187 billion over the next decade, a shift advocates warn will hollow out prevention work at the local level.
On the Ground: Reaction and Gaps
Public health officials and community partners say the cuts threaten to unravel years of slow, unglamorous progress on diet-related chronic disease. They warn that schools, clinics and senior centers will feel the absence of structured nutrition education long before any replacement shows up.
Becky Schlikerman Sernik of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health told LA Public Press that CalFresh Healthy Living "plays a key role" in preventing obesity, diabetes and heart disease and that there is "no viable, large-scale plan" to replace it right now. Local clinics report they are already looking for new funding streams, while volunteer networks are trying to cover basic garden maintenance in the meantime.
What Comes Next
For the moment, CalFresh Healthy Living’s resources and training materials remain online through the CalFresh Healthy Living website, even as the program approaches its June 30, 2026 wind-down date in California.
Federal guidance allows states to spend FY2025 SNAP-Ed funds into FY2026 if they submit the required plan, according to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. California, however, has already set the clock on ending its version of the program.
For the school and community sites that built urban gardens with CalFresh Healthy Living’s help, the next steps are stark. Either communities find enough volunteers and local money to sustain the plots, or the raised beds that once grew kale, tomatoes and herbs risk turning back into weeds.
