Foodlinks America - March 28, 2008
Foodlinks America - March 28, 2008
In this issue:
• Farm Bill Stalled as Food Demand Escalates
• Nutrition Assistance Notes
• Food Stamp Facts
• Obesity Round-Up
• Live Richer, Live Longer
• Reports from the Field
• Small Bites
Foodlinks America is published 24 times a year by California Emergency Foodlink in Sacramento, CA and distributed by Weinberg & Vauthier Consulting, 6412 CR 116, Burnet, TX 78611; Zy Weinberg and Barbara Vauthier, Editors; email: bvauthier@tefapalliance.org.
Foodlinks America is not copyrighted, so the information can be freely shared with colleagues and friends, though attribution for reprinted articles is appreciated. For archived issues of Foodlinks America, go to: www.tefapalliance.org. To request a free subscription to the newsletter or to submit story ideas, contact Barbara Vauthier at: bvauthier@tefapalliance.org.
Farm Bill Stalled as Food Demand Escalates
Unable to achieve compromise on key issues or to identify funds to cover costs of competing priorities, Congress remains deadlocked in attempting to pass a five-year Farm Bill to renew the nation’s nutrition, agriculture, conservation, and biofuel programs. Meanwhile, demands for food assistance escalate throughout the country.
Before leaving town for a two-week Easter recess, Congress voted once again to extend the current 2002 Farm Bill, this time until April 18, 2008. It is unlikely that a new Farm Bill can be negotiated by that time. Leaders in both Houses are struggling to pare billions from their requests to stay within the $10 billion increase the Administration is willing to negotiate. All sides are frustrated by the lack of progress and have begun discussing fall-back positions.
The longer the Farm Bill is delayed the more other events will intrude on its completion. Rising domestic and global food prices are affecting nutrition assistance and hunger relief programs. The World Food Programme is $500 million short of funds for its international aid mission. And here in the U.S., food stamp benefits are falling behind inflated grocery prices, dairy price increases continue to plague WIC Program budgets, and states shopping with federal entitlement dollars in The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) are seeing their buying power diminished.
Anti-hunger activists are particularly concerned with overburdened emergency food networks throughout the U.S. “The holidays have come and gone, and food banks continue to face one of the toughest periods in their history,” said Vicki Escarra, president of America’s Second Harvest in a March 19, 2008 news release. “Every day that goes by without a new Farm Bill is a day without hope for food banks around the country. Our member food banks are being forced to dip into their limited financial reserves to purchase food and ration it to people in need,” she added.
The drop in federal commodity support, the general economic downturn, and rampant food price inflation are devastating food banks and food pantries everywhere. “These combined factors have created a perfect storm of hardship,” Escarra stated. Meanwhile, a proposed increase in TEFAP funding languishes in the Farm Bill.
President Bush said recently that if no compromise Farm Bill can be drafted by the April 18 deadline, then the 2002 bill should be extended for at least one more year. But House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) irritated that, “We’re still trying to write a Farm Bill with money we don’t have,” has said the House would revert to a baseline bill with no increases at all rather than extend current law again. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who heads the Senate Agriculture Committee has been struggling to fashion a bill that will appeal to all interests.
The inability of government leaders to find funds to finish the Farm Bill is also inextricably tied to other government spending priorities. Former Senator and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern also awaits reconciliation of the Farm Bill. A program that provides commodities for feeding schoolchildren overseas and bears his name, the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, will likely increase by $40 million when the Farm Bill is finalized.
McGovern, now 85, said the Farm Bill would easily slide through Congress if it were not for the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on Iraq. “If we didn’t have this war going in Iraq, this thing would be a piece of cake,” said McGovern. “They could drop that much money through the cracks every lunch hour at the Pentagon.”
Nutrition Assistance Notes
New WIC food rules delayed: Implementation of revised food package rules for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC Program) will be delayed for two months next year to better coordinate with the federal fiscal year, according to a notice in the March 17, 2008 Federal Register by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Implementation on August 5, 2009 has been changed to October 1, 2009. See: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/…edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-5249.pdf.
Expanded Summer Food Eligibility Serves Rural Children: A pilot test of the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) that sought to reach more sponsors and children in rural Pennsylvania through relaxed program eligibility standards has proven effective, according to a report released by the USDA in February 2008. The project lowered area eligibility from 50 percent of children in a neighborhood to 40 percent.
A total of 72 new sponsor organizations participated in the SFSP in the first year of the pilot, with about a third of them serving 40-percent sites. In the second year of the pilot, seven new rural sponsors served 40-percent areas. The characteristics of these new sites were similar to the sites of traditional sponsors, according to USDA in “The Pennsylvania Rural Area Eligibility Pilot: Summary.” However, all of the new rural 40-percent sites were open sites, meaning a child could get a meal without providing eligibility documentation.
“Lowering the eligibility threshold to 40 percent had the desirable impact of increasing the number of sponsors and sites,” USDA reported. Lowering the percentage, an action long advocated by program supporters, “Has the potential to increase rural SFSP meal service to poor children in rural areas.” For additional details, see: http://www.fns.usda.gov/oane/menu/Published/CNP/FILES/PASFSPRuralPilotSummary.pdf.
This year’s TEFAP foods listed: Surplus and purchased commodities available for donation to hungry Americans this year under The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) were formally announced by USDA in the March 21, 2008 Federal Register. The notice lists 10 items – from grapefruit juice to canned pork – that will be in surplus during fiscal year 2008 and more than 70 other entitlement items that states can order from USDA for local distribution. Learn more details at: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/…edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-5760.pdf.
Food Stamp Facts
Benefit delivery costs examined: A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) compares the Food Stamp Program (FSP) with eight other public assistance programs across four measures of program effectiveness – administrative costs, error payments, program access, and benefit targeting. The comparison includes two other USDA nutrition assistance programs, three cash assistance programs, and three programs providing non-cash benefits other than food or nutrition assistance.
Results show that the FSP and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) present contrasting patterns. The EITC program has lower administrative costs and higher program access rates than the FSP, but the FSP is more successful in limiting overpayments. Though missing information makes it hard to generalize across the other programs, there is some evidence suggesting that programs with higher errors have lower administrative costs. Low administrative costs also appear to be inversely associated with good program access for recipients and programs that are more highly targeted tend to have higher benefit delivery costs. To learn more see: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/CCR39/.
Food stamps and obesity weakly linked: A review of recent studies of Food Stamp Program participants has found that receiving benefits does not result in increased Body Mass Index (BMI) or the prevalence of overweight or obesity. One group exception was non-elderly women, who constitute 28 percent of the caseload, had a slightly increased possibility of obesity. For further information, go to: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB34/.
Obesity Round-Up
Breakfast keeps the weight off: A new study shows that teenagers who ate breakfast kept the pounds off. Researchers looked at a diverse group of more than 2,200 adolescents in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area over a five-year period and found that there was a direct relationship between eating breakfast and Body Mass Index (BMI): the more often breakfast is eaten, the lower the BMI. Teens who ate breakfast got more carbohydrates and fiber, with fewer calories coming from fat.
The study, which appeared in the March 2008 issue of Pediatrics, found that only about half the adolescents ate breakfast regularly. Girls were more likely to pass on breakfast consistently while boys were more likely to go daily. The research emphasized the importance of exercise as well as food. For details, see: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/…issue=3&resourcetype=HWCIT.
Live Richer, Live Longer
There is a large and widening disparity in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, according to new government statistics. Although life expectancy has increased overall, federal officials found “widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” from birth through elderly age brackets.
In 1980-1982, the most affluent segment of the population could expect to live 2.8 years longer (75.8 years versus 73 years) than those in the poorest group, according to Dr. Gopal Singh, a demographer with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. By 2000, the difference in life expectancy had grown to 4.5 years (79.2 years versus 74.7 years). The disparity continues to grow, as does the most extreme difference – white women who outlive poor black men by more than 14 years.
Although the government research does not provide official explanations for the growing longevity gap, some of the likely influences include:
- Diagnostic and treatment advances in medical care for those who can afford them;
- Greater declines in smoking among people with more education and income;
- The likelihood that low-income neighborhoods have more crime and risky behavior coupled with limited access to nutritious food; and
- An estimated 47 million Americans lack health insurance and there are racial disparities even among those who do have insurance.
Reports from the Field
Rising food and gas prices are putting the economic squeeze on the elderly and working poor, as this article from the Democrat-Chronicle in Rochester, NY on March 23, 2008 describes:
Even without the extra pressure from rising prices, hard times had already fallen on Loretta Holley, 55, of Rochester and her husband. Alfred Holley, 54, suffered a stroke last May, ending a 30-year career in building services at the University of Rochester. “He was bringing home good (money) and I didn’t have any worries. He provided well,” Loretta Holley said.
Now, their weekly “splurge” — dinner at Old Country Buffet — is on the chopping block. And Holley finds the price of gasoline so high that rather than drive a mile for groceries, she waits until her daughter goes shopping and rides with her. If a disabled friend who lives with them didn’t help out, “we’d be out the door,” she said.
Higher costs of energy, food, and health care are pinching household budgets across the country, forcing many people in the Rochester region to make subtle or dramatic changes in their lifestyles. Money that might have been spent on clothing or a dinner out instead is being consumed in ever-increasing gulps and gobbles at the gas pump or supermarket checkout line. The result is what economists call “stagflation,” a dreaded combination of a stagnant economy and rising inflation.
Many Americans think the economy is worse than stagnant. A USA Today/Gallup Poll last weekend found that 76 percent of the 1,025 respondents said the U.S. economy is in recession and that a stunning 59 percent said a depression, unseen in this country since the 1930s, was likely. On the inflation side, consumer prices are now increasing at a faster rate than Americans have experienced in almost 20 years.
Energy is the main culprit. During December, January and February, energy prices including gasoline and home heating fuels shot up at a 20 percent annual rate, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Food prices rose at a five percent rate during that period. To make matters worse, wages aren’t keeping up. A local survey by the Rochester Business Alliance forecast an average raise of 3.3 percent this year, not bad for a typical year but not nearly enough when it costs $60 to fill the gas tank and milk costs $1.20 more per gallon than it did in 2005. “The purchasing power of earnings is decreasing,” said analyst Sara Johnson of Global Insight Inc., a Lexington, Mass., think tank.
Energy and food are consuming a growing part of Americans’ disposable income. Johnson said the portion of income spent on energy was four percent in 2002 and now is six percent. Rochesterians can attest to that. Gasoline prices in the region have hit all-time highs repeatedly in recent days, peaking at an average of $3.39 for a gallon of regular on Wednesday.
Heating costs, meanwhile, have gone up dramatically. Between 2000 and 2006, residential prices rose almost 20 percent for electricity, 62 percent for natural gas and 72 percent for heating oil, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency.
Eric and Ann VanderBerg of Hilton have already filed their 2007 tax return, received their refund and spent it — on insulating their attic in an effort to keep their heating bills down. “It’s money well spent,” said Eric VanderBerg, 39, a maintenance, mechanical and electrical worker for the Gates Chili school district who also takes on outside electrical jobs. Worried about making ends meet for their family of six, he frequently runs errands or shops for groceries on the way home from work to save on gas.
Ann is a homemaker and also cuts hair and substitutes as a kitchen worker in the Hilton schools. Even so, the couple’s checking account never seems to have enough in it to allow one big grocery shopping trip a week. Instead, they tend to shop as needed.
“We’re all hoping that they can use corn to bring the price of oil down, but meanwhile the price of food is going up,” Eric VanderBerg asid.
Indeed, the move toward ethanol is blamed for many food-price increases, as wheat farmers turn to growing corn, and feed for chicken and cows is used to make fuel instead of food. Food prices haven’t risen as dramatically as fuel, but because food makes up about 13 percent of household budgets, Johnson of Global Insight said small increases can add up. Even the economy loaf of white bread that used to sell for $1 has gone up 20 cents since 2005.
Peter Knickerbocker, a potter in Benton, Yates County, lies awake some nights worrying about rising prices. So far, Knickerbocker, 62, and his wife, Nancy Gates, 59, a county worker, have had to make only a few adjustments to the way they live and do business.
For instance, Knickerbocker has started driving his art to shops in New England and Maryland to save on spiraling shipping costs, and has negotiated for lower propane prices to fire his kiln. But he’s anxious about what might lie ahead. “Every time I turn around, fuel prices are going up. If I buy a $15 item from a catalog, it costs me $15 in transportation,” he added.
Meanwhile, health costs are going up, too. Between 2006 and 2007, employers stopped providing full coverage for 16,000 workers in the Rochester area, according to Barbara Cutrona, vice president for business information and training at the Rochester Business Alliance. Nationally, employees paid 156 percent more for their insurance contributions in 2007 than they did in 2001. And their out-of-pocket expenses, such as co-pays, went up 138 percent in the same period, according to the human resources firm Hewitt Associates.
With all these pocketbook pressures, it isn’t surprising that more people are turning to credit counseling agencies for help. In 2007, the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Rochester saw a 15 percent increase in counseling requests and this year has brought even more requests, said John Gilligan, executive director. The cost of gasoline is a big issue, Gilligan said. “We’re seeing budgets where the cost of gasoline and parking are probably the third biggest (expense). Some of them are paying more for gasoline than they are for rent. We have seen $400 to $500 a month they’re claiming in gasoline. If you have two cars and they’re SUVs, it’s not hard to believe.”
Hardest hit are the working poor, said Mark Horn of the Eastern Service Workers of America, a Rochester-based self-help and advocacy organization for service, seasonal, temporary, domestic and disabled workers. “Look at recent news reports: The cost of pasta has almost doubled,” Horn wrote by e-mail. “When low-income people have to pay twice as much for the ultimate low-cost food, that literally leads to starvation.”
With rising transportation costs, “our members have to choose between buying gas to get to their jobs and groceries,” Horn said. Loretta Holley and her husband are members of the Eastern Service Workers, volunteering their time to help others who may be facing even more difficult financial situations than they are. The Holleys take a variety of medications for chronic health problems including diabetes, but gaps in insurance coverage mean they can’t always buy the medicine they need. “I get his meds, and I don’t worry about mine,” Loretta Holley said.
Horn said younger people are worried about money issues, too, citing figures that suggest 70 percent of college graduates can’t find work in their chosen fields, and half of all unemployed people are college-educated. Some experts, though, paint a slightly brighter picture.
Johnson said the U.S. economy should turn around by summer, helped by stabilizing housing markets and people receiving and spending their federal stimulus payments.
And Peter G. Humphrey, president and chief executive of Five Star Bank in Warsaw, Wyoming County, noted that the subprime mortgage crisis has largely skipped the Rochester area. Housing prices were never inflated here and therefore didn’t encourage the risky lending that led to massive foreclosures in some markets. “People continue to have their jobs and are going to continue to bring home a paycheck,” Humphrey said.
“They ought to be able to pay their bills if they’ve been fairly responsible.” Yet Humphrey acknowledged that “this is the time of year that we typically see a little bit of stress” as people wrestle with unpaid holiday bills, peak utility costs, property taxes and, for some, income taxes they must pay by April 15.
Some people are reacting to the stresses by spending less. Gilligan, the credit counseling director, said he’s seeing more people who either have run out of money or are afraid they might. Knickerbocker, the Yates County artisan, invested in collectibles for years but recently sold them and put the cash in the bank so he’d have more money to pay the bills, if necessary. With people having to spend so much for essentials such as gas and food, he imagines they won’t buy his art, endangering his livelihood. “Culture always suffers when people get anxious,” Knickerbocker said.
Small Bites
One for the road: Nearly one-fifth – 19 percent – of American meals are eaten in the car.
Ag energy: Americans consume about 400 gallons of oil a year per person – some 17 percent of total energy use – for agriculture.
Closer to home: If every American ate just one meal a week of local or organically-raised ingredients, oil consumption would be reduced an estimated 1.1 million barrels.
Riding the wave: In 1980, less than 10 percent of American homes had a microwave. By 1999, the figure was 83 percent.
Not so ripe: Eighty percent of the annual U.S. tomato crop is harvested green.
Food and health spending reversal: In 1960, Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent on health care. Today, they spend 9.9 percent on food and 16 percent on health care.
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