April 1, 2025 – On her first visit to Iowa as Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins toured farms and factories with the state’s Republican leaders, including U.S. Representatives Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, state Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, and Governor Kim Reynolds. During the tour, Rollins signaled she’s open to allowing Reynolds to use USDA money to implement her own summer meal distribution system instead of opting in to federal SUN Bucks, which give low-income families cash benefits for groceries to replace school meals during summer months.
“There is no better governor in America than your governor, Kim Reynolds,” Rollins said. “Everything she sends us, whatever the waiver is, especially on school programs in the summer, we will be looking at very very closely and are really really excited about.”
In 2024, Reynolds submitted a waiver request to the USDA to run a program she said would serve more kids at a lower cost. Her office said it did not want to participate in SunBucks because the program didn’t explicitly promote healthy foods. Instead, she proposed giving out boxes of healthy foods at distribution sites.
The USDA, under President Biden, denied the waiver. Hunger groups across Iowa also fought hard to get Reynolds to opt in to SunBucks instead, arguing that the flexibility of the cash benefit is what makes the program effective, allowing it to surmount the challenge of getting meals to families when kids are not in school. Congress modeled SunBucks after the COVID-era Pandemic EBT program, which researchers estimate lifted around 3 million children out of hunger. But Reynolds doubled down and resubmitted the waiver request after Trump took office.
Rollins’ comments come as other waivers to restrict hunger programs are also on the table. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently indicated the administration will also grant waivers for states to restrict SNAP participants from buying soda and other unhealthy foods. But a recent bill that passed Iowa’s House takes those restrictions to a new level, whittling down SNAP-eligible foods to a short list of staples while boosting incentives for fresh produce purchases.
During her trip, Rollins also met with members of the Iowa Farm Bureau, spoke at the Iowa Ag Leaders dinner, and announced she would release $537 million in funding already committed to oil and gas companies and fuel distributors to pay for shipping, storing, and dispensing higher ethanol and biodiesel fuel blends. (Link to this post.)
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