Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy

Santa Fe City and County, Advisory Council on Food Policy Thursday, April 9, 2026 9:00AM-11AM Hybrid: Zoom and In Person - Location: Santa Fe County Extension Office 3229 Rodeo Road Santa Fe, NM 87507-4892 A. CALL TO ORDER 9:09am B. ROLL CALL Susan Perry, Co-Chair - Present Peter Ives, Co-Chair – Excused Nate Crail - Present Eric Renz-Whitmore - Present David Sundberg - Present Emigdio Ballon - Excused Tejinder Ciano - Not excused Said Assali - Present Coy Maienza - Present Staff: Pam Roy, Coordinator Helen Henry, Scribe Guests: Harrison Gibson (and Josephine) Catherine Nolte, The Food Depot Marco Alarid White, NM Center on Law and Poverty Michelle Stizza, Santa Fe County Extension JoeDee Powers, Alliance for Local Economic Prosperity James Martinez, Santa Fe County Senior Services Hvtce Miller, SF County C. APPROVAL OF AGENDA –April 9, 2026 [ACTION] Prioritization and Agenda Order Moved: David Seconded” Eric Approved D. ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES – December 11, 2025, January 8, 2026, February12,2026, March 12, 2026 [ACTION] Moved: Nate Seconded: David Approved E. COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE FLOOR David reported that they relaunched the Mobile Market. Harrison said that he is consulting with Kitchen Angels operations and food security serving homebound neighbors in Santa Fe. Michelle said that they are working with Master Gardeners and their other programs to get ready for the summer. Sue congratulated the County staff on the AgriGate website and how it has grown over the years to be a wonderful resource. F. INITIATIVES AND ACTIONS 1. Local Updates/Federal/State Marco reported that they are now beginning to see people being kicked off of SNAP because of the new work requirements. With the ACLU, NMCLP is planning to sue the city of Roswell who are demanding unlawful permits for a Food Not Bombs chapter who have been doing food distributions in the city square. He’s working on bringing a First Amendment cause of action to say that the food distribution is protected speech. He'll provide updates as that develops. They have worked out an extension around extending SNAP benefits for another three months beginning in June through a process of reapplication if people have been kicked off because they did not meet the work requirements. These are very broad and include volunteer service. The Center on Law and Poverty has “Know Your Rights” materials to help people understand the processes - https://www.nmpovertylaw.org/resource-page/nmclp-food-cash-security-resources/ The state is kind of putting out some confusing training materials for their own people regarding things like what qualifying programs are. On a longer-term policy level, the NMCLP is trying to get the state to have federally funded employment and training programs in place,. There is a hotline for connecting people to navigators so that they can apply for SNAP benefits. The hotline number is 505-531-5556. Marco said that they are collaborating with another working group to address the needs of college students and they are hoping that the state's willing to kind of take those administrative steps to expand that eligibility category. Catherine sent information about how The Food Depot is working to help people navigate getting SNAP benefits. The Food Depot has two bilingual Navigators on staff who work with the Santa Fe CONNECT network and HCA to help clients apply for SNAP and other assistance  programs. Through the CONNECT network, they can help clients access support from our fellow nonprofits, including assistance with rent and utilities, education and employment resources, and other support services. Flyers in English and Spanish are available. The Food Depot’s Navigation contact information is below: Navigation Resource Line: 505-531-5556 Navigation webpage: https://thefooddepot.org/find-help/ Cecilia Gutierrez Lead Bilingual Resource Navigator cgutierrez@thefooddepot.org Nathalie Beltran Bilingual Resource Navigator nbeltran@thefooddepot.org Pam will follow up with Erica Renaud at the City about the urban ag ordinance process and to see if she is interested in becoming a council member. Bonnie Murphy is now on contract to move the Farm to Foodbank program forward now. NMDA is involved in moving this from the federal level to the state level and it should be online by July 1 when the state moves into its FY27 budget. Federal policy: The House Ag committee is working on its version of the farm bill. Congressman Vasquez is on this committee. The Senate is beginning to look at this as well. Sen Heinrich is on the Agriculture Appropriations committee which is working on this as well and has been on board with all of the NM Food & Agriculture Policy Council’s requests. There are several sign-on letters that are being circulated. Veronica Griego, State Director for the WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Programs, has been very involved in this process. They have also been focused on individual titles in the farm bill and hopefully submitting some marker bills. Pam went over details of what they have been looking at. We’ve lost federal staff in our district offices, such as NRCS natural resource conservation Service offices and our Farm Service Agency offices to provide that technical assistance. In the meantime the state legislature has passed a million dollars of funding to support state technical assistance that NRCS would be providing. So, as a state, we're trying to balance this situation. David: With technical assistance and defunding of staff at NRCS, could there be other organizations that are authorized to provide support? Pam will follow up with this. It could be that there is funding available for farmer training programs. Also, the REAP (Rural Energy Assistance Program) program might be another opportunity for farmers. Some federal funding has gotten shifted around, so that’s something that needs more research. Pam and Michelle can follow up with this. Technically, these programs should still be funded through the current farm bill. Is there any conversation with restoring the 2501 grants to underserved communities? Pam says that she has not heard anything about this. This is focused on DEI and this is not in line with the current administration. David thinks that there may be something that would replace this but doesn’t have the overt DEI language. He will take a closer look. There was an announcement that Sen Lujan had been nominated for a James Beard award for his work on food assistance. Pam asked if ALTSD has put anything out about NM Grown for seniors - James said that he hasn’t seen anything yet. Pam asked if we could visit one of the senior centers at some point when the program is up and running and James said that would be wonderful. 2. Update Food Plan from Food Plan Committee Helen summarized the discussion we had last month about the Food Plan and will send this out to the committee. The Food Plan committee will meet on April 23, 10:30 - 12:00 at the County Extension office. This is not a meeting with a quorum of Council members, so it does not need to be announced publicly. G. PRESENTATIONS: None H. STAFF COMMUNICATIONS Website re-build and transfer - Update from Helen Henry Sue and Helen have selected a theme and will be moving forward with the site rebuild. Farm to Table and partners will be doing a conference, probably the first week of December in Albuquerque The focus is going to be on workshops to share and help bring people together and learn how to fill out applications and grant proposals. I. ITEMS FROM THE COUNCIL Member update Nate said that people were invited by Commissioner Adam Fulton Johnson a few weeks ago to discuss his resolution about urban agriculture. Nate will circulate the resolution once he sends a more final version. He wants to have a staff internal working group to look at how we can improve county policies and programs to make urban agriculture easier throughout the county. They will also invite the SF Food Policy Council to collaborate and then the group will report back to the BCC. J. ITEMS FROM THE CO-CHAIRS 1. New member update Sue is working on getting new Council members on board. There are new protocols with the City. We are hoping that Erica Renaud might be able to take one of the City positions. Eric thinks this would be a really good option. We will move forward with this when Pam gets back. We will need to advertise the position opening. 2.. Next Meeting: May 14, 2026: Hybrid 4. Topics for future presentations K. ADJOURNMENT 10:10am These notes were taken contemporaneously and may contain errors and omissions. Signed by ___________________________ Helen Henry. I verify that these notes have been approved by a quorum of members of the Santa Fe Food Policy Council. Signed by Susan Perry, Co-chair or, Peter Ives, Co-chair _____________________________________________________