Sure. One thing I would say that may be a surprise to folks is that food won't solve hunger. Food is not going to solve hunger. Income is going to solve hunger. It's really important for us to figure out a way to ensure that moms and dads and kids are putting really good food on their tables, and that's not the case right now. We work in hundreds of communities across the country where people are struggling deeply to make ends meet, and their fridges are empty.
We need to have income support programs, which I could talk at length about. I have hope for the national poverty reduction strategy. I know there's been quite a bit of movement on the housing file, which is very important. A lot of money has been unlocked there, but I encourage the national food policy to continue to talk and to put pressure on that body to really think about the income supports that are necessary to ensure people can live with health and dignity.
In terms of kids, I would absolutely foreground the importance of creating a national school nutrition program. I think that is a no-brainer. If you link the kind of food that appears in those schools to a local food strategy and put a sustainability lens on it, you can create a market for really good food and support farmers who want to go in a way that is different from the chemical and export monoculture.
There's a growing number of farmers who want to move in a different direction. They don't want to grow 12,000 acres of corn. They want to grow mixed crops. It's exciting to see these new farmers come onto the scene. We have an aging farmer population, so who's coming up next? I think there's a huge interest in growing differently. If we're going to talk about kids, let's make sure that they walk into school and eat well so they can focus and concentrate. Let's get the food literacy stuff tied into that and also support a local food economy.