In Connecticut and across the country, affordability is the issue of the day. A national poll from December 2025 found that the “cost of living” was by far the top issue facing the country. This past session, the Connecticut General Assembly made many sweeping proposals focused on making th e state more affordable. More specifically, major proposed and enacted legislation from both parties in the General Assembly’s 2025 and 2026 sessions has focused on key components of affordability, including housing , childcare , healthcare , taxes , and more. The bills that have passed have made major strides towards addressing key components of the affordability issue, with the Early Childhood Education Endowment being one significant example. While there is still more work to be done on all of these issues, there is one key component of affordability that impacts all residents but is relatively overlooked at the moment: food. Food and affordability Food is a key part of affordability because it is one of the largest expenses every household needs to pay. The United Way of Connecticut’s ALICE Survival Budget estimates what different size households would need to make just to get by in this state. Among the eight example households listed on the ALICE Survival Budget web page, food is always the second or third largest expense . The only category consistently more costly than food is housing. Food has also gotten significantly more expensive in the last several years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, national food prices rose 9.9% in 2022, which was the highest food inflation rate since 1979. Those prices kept rising each following year, and as these increases happened, one national survey found that in 2025 “more than one in four working-age adults used credit cards to purchase groceries and experienced repayment challenges” with another 5% relying on payday loans. These challenges have driven rising food insecurity, with Feeding America stating Connecticut has the highest food insecurity rate (15.3% or ~560,000) in all of the Northeast. Current state of food policy in Connecticut While Connecticut is a leader on many policy areas, food is one area where we unfortunately lag behind our fellow Northeastern states. There was undeniable progress this year, with the state enacting universal free school breakfast in budget adjustments for FY27. Additionally, the governor has released a total of $76.74 million in one-time funding for food and farm-related programs from the “Federal Cuts Response Fund” created by Special Act 25-1 . However, there are a number of factors working against the state despite this recent progress. First, $76.74 million in one-time funding can’t fully offset the estimated $182 million in federal cuts for food in Connecticut across FY26 and 27. Second, Feeding America’s 15.3% food insecurity rate for Connecticut is from 2024, before these cuts took place ( DataHaven’s 2025 estimate was an even higher 16%). Third, Connecticut is starting well behind many neighboring states on food spending. We entered 2026 spending less per capita on all 10 food security programs, 11 farm and food system, and 30 grants and earmarks in our state budget than Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey spent on just three of their biggest food security programs. For these reasons, significant progress on making food more affordable will likely require more comprehensive state action. Credit: State of Food Insecurity Report / CT.gov How food policy can improve affordability There are a number of ways that a more comprehensive coordinated food policy framework could make it easier and cheaper for Connecticut residents to put food on the table. This framework would ensure dedicated annual funding from the state to both provide households with resources to afford increased prices today and invest in a robust local food system to create downward pressure on food prices (and related costs) in the long-term. A few examples of immediate support include universal free school lunch to remove five meals a week from at-home grocery bills and a state minimum SNAP benefit that might ensure households get enough support to reflect the true cost of food. A few examples of the long-term food systems investments include funding community food hubs that could aggregate and distribute local food at scale, local purchasing requirements on state food spending to give local producers predictable income that could allow them to invest in expanding, and a food business incubator program to ensure every neighborhood has high quality grocery stores so no one needs to drive or take the bus across town. These are far from the only policy options, but the goal of these examples is to illustrate that by prioritizing food policy as a whole, Connecticut can make major progress on affordability. It is important to clearly state that the purpose of this article is absolutely not to suggest that the state should prioritize food policy instead of childcare, housing, taxes, utilities, and more. Instead, food policy should be prioritized along with these other areas to form a comprehensive affordability policy, where no basic necessity is left out. If rent goes down but grocery bills go up, households will still be facing strain. If they both go down (along with other basic needs), it would be a substantial step towards a Connecticut that is affordable for all. Christian Duborg is the Food Nutrition Policy Analyst at the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity, and Opportunity (CWCSEO), a nonpartisan legislative agency of the Connecticut General Assembly. ...read more read less