San Diego's Food Justice Community Has a Clear Agenda … Now Comes the Hard Part.
Key themes from San Diego County's December 2025 FJCAP community meeting, and what they mean for organizations working in this space.
On December 12th, 2025, nearly 60 people showed up to a Zoom call to talk about food. Twelve County departments were represented. Advocates, farmers, nonprofit leaders, community health workers and County staff. The agenda: review progress on San Diego County's Food Justice Community Action Plan — 11 board-selected actions working toward equitable food access across the region. What came out of it was worth paying attention to. This wasn't a perfunctory public meeting where residents clap politely and leave. People came with opinions, data, frustration, and ideas. Seven live polls generated real-time feedback. The chat was active throughout. And the themes that emerged across multiple questions were consistent enough to read as a clear message from the community to the County. Here's what stood out.
The Community Knows Exactly What It Wants
Ask people what food access looks like and you might expect a scattered answer. This group had priorities. Food hubs topped the list in two separate polls. They drew 24% when participants named the most important marketing and sales channels to expand, and edible food recovery ranked tied for first among all FJCAP actions at 19%. Community food production came right behind it: urban farms and community gardens each received 21% when people were asked what scale of food production policy should focus on. Land access came in at 21% in the marketing channel poll. That's a coherent picture. Local production, local distribution, local infrastructure. The community wants a food system that doesn't depend on supply chains that proved fragile the moment COVID hit. The argument got easier to make in the months after this meeting. Ongoing disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly a third of the world's fertilizer trade, sent US agricultural input costs up by more than 40% in a matter of weeks. California doesn't ship most of its food through the Strait, but when the raw materials that grow your food are vulnerable to a conflict 8,000 miles away, the case for local food systems stops being ideological. It becomes practical. Several attendees made this connection explicitly. One participant framed it plainly: expanding food system capacity is about creating local jobs, keeping resources circulating in the community and building resilience against supply chain disruptions. That's the difference between food access as a charity intervention and food access as an economic development strategy. And it's the frame the County should be using.
Where Infrastructure Goes Is as Important as Whether It Gets Built
The community is watching location decisions closely. When asked what factor should carry the most weight in siting food infrastructure, 45% said proximity to underserved populations. A further 40% split evenly between "proximity to underserved populations" and "farmers/producers and proximity to underserved communities" in a separate poll on the same question. One comment flagged something worth sitting with: infrastructure should also serve areas not historically labeled "underserved." Kearny Mesa, Linda Vista and Serra Mesa were named specifically. The point wasn't to deprioritize equity. It was a call for a more precise understanding of where need actually lives in San Diego. This kind of specificity from community members signals an engaged, informed audience. They're not rubber-stamping the County's approach. They're refining it.
CalFresh Is Not the Whole Answer
The CalFresh conversation was arguably the most charged of the evening. Easy to understand why. California's statewide ABAWD waiver, the protection that had largely shielded CalFresh recipients from strict work requirements, expired on November 1, 2025. Six weeks before this meeting. Under the rules now in effect, adults aged 18-64 without dependents under 14 and not receiving disability benefits must work, volunteer or participate in approved training for at least 80 hours per month. If they don't, CalFresh eligibility is capped at three months in any 36-month period. California plans to begin enforcing this in June 2026. Estimates put the affected population at roughly 1.1 million Californians, about 46% of adult CalFresh recipients. Attendees knew this was coming. Questions flew: how are organizations dealing with the new requirements? Is the County's data even capturing the people who don't qualify, not just those who applied? The San Diego Hunger Coalition offered to share mapping data on where participation gaps actually are. One comment landed plainly: "We need to come up with an alternative to CalFresh being the answer to all." That's a structural observation, not a complaint about the program. CalFresh was never designed to cover everyone. Income thresholds exclude people who aren't poor enough to qualify. The new work rules will cut off more. For food-focused nonprofits, this gap is both an escalating service demand and a policy opening. Somebody has to articulate what fills it.
Funding Is the Elephant in the Room
When asked what would help them feel more engaged in the process, 29% of attendees said funding for the organizations doing this work. Second-highest response in the poll. One person asked directly whether partnerships for job creation were factored into FJCAP actions, noting that nonprofits in this space are "marginally or typically underfunded." It's a fair observation, and it points to a real tension. The County can convene, plan and advocate. But the actual work happens at the ground level: organizations running food hubs, managing community gardens, handling client intake, driving the truck. Those groups are chronically under-resourced. And the FJCAP doesn't change that on its own. For nonprofits working in this space, that's both a challenge and an opening. The clearer you can articulate your role in the regional food system, your measurable outcomes and your connection to these County-identified priorities, the better positioned you are when funding does flow through.
The Community Wants to Know What Happens Next
The biggest single response across all seven live polls: 43% said "clear summaries of what's been done and what's next" would make them feel more engaged in the FJCAP process. That's not a request for more data. It's a call for accountability and plain-language communication. People want confirmation that the meeting mattered. That their input moved something forward. For the County, this is actionable feedback. For nonprofits watching this process, it's a reminder that stakeholders care deeply about follow-through. Building trust requires the same thing: telling people what happened as a result of what they shared.
What This Community Said, and What to Do With It
If you're already doing food justice work in San Diego, you probably didn't need this meeting to tell you the need is real. What's worth sitting with is the specificity of what the community said it wants from people doing that work. The funding signal is direct: organizations can't keep absorbing rising service demand on flat budgets. Making that case to funders, in language that connects your outcomes to what this community named as priorities, is one of the most concrete things you can do right now. Food hubs, edible food recovery, community food production at an urban scale: these are exactly what came out on top. If that describes your work, you have a policy tailwind worth putting in your next grant narrative. The CalFresh cliff is coming fast. June 2026 is when enforcement of the new work requirements begins. Whether your organization does direct service, outreach or advocacy, having a clear-eyed view of who's about to fall through that gap, and how your programs respond, matters. The community at this meeting was already asking the County to think beyond CalFresh. That's an advocacy opening. And the transparency signal is worth applying closer to home. Forty-three percent of participants said what would help them most is knowing what happened as a result of their input. Donors, clients and community partners all want the same thing. The organizations that follow up, close the loop and report back plainly tend to hold their communities together better than the ones that go quiet between events.
We Work with Food Justice Nonprofits Across San Diego and Beyond
If your organization is doing food justice work in California and wants to connect its outcomes to what this community named as priorities — food hubs, edible food recovery, urban food production — we can help you make that case to funders clearly and compellingly. Simplay contact us!
