Foodlinks America – May 9, 2008
Foodlinks America – May 9, 2008
In this issue:
• Stage Set for Farm Bill Showdown
• 2009 Appropriations Will Wait
• Food Banks Hungry for Help, More Food
• Meeting Addresses Food System Changes
• Obesity Round-Up
• USDA to Buy Bonus Pork
• 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.
Stage Set for Farm Bill Showdown
Congressional negotiators have finished hammering out a $300 billion Farm Bill that revises federal agricultural policy for the next five years, and includes substantial spending increases for nutrition assistance. The conference report on the bill (H.R. 2419) will be voted on by the House and Senate in mid-May and sent to President Bush, who has voiced reservations about several portions of the legislation and threatened to veto. Farm Bill supporters are uncertain whether there are enough votes to override a veto.
The final bill boosts spending by nearly $17 billion over a ten-year period, with nutrition programs getting $10.3 billion more, an additional $4 billion allocated to land stewardship programs, a $1.35 billion increase for fruits and vegetables – referred to as “specialty crops,” – and $1.2 billion more for biofuel development. The bulk of the nutrition changes provide for expansion of the Food Stamp Program, though final details of the legislation were not available before Foodlinks America’s publication deadline.
“Today’s adoption of all major elements of the new Farm Bill brings us within a few steps of the finish line,” commented Senate Agriculture Committee chair Tom Harkin (D-IA). “There’s a lot of good stuff in there,” he said. Harkin also emphasized that congressional negotiators were conscious of the need to satisfy the Administration. “We did move toward the White House – big time,” Harkin stated.
The Administration’s main opposition to the bill concerns price supports for commodity crops and the fact that significant government subsidies go to wealthy Americans. “This is not reform and does not move Congress closer to a plan the President would sign,” said Chuck Conner, deputy secretary for agriculture and a key negotiator on the Bush team. “We need to see what they [Members of Congress] decide,” noted Agriculture Department spokesman Keith Williams. “The President is very serious about a veto. He’s very serious that reform is needed,” Williams added.
The final Farm Bill could possibly garner enough congressional support to gain the necessary two-thirds vote to override a veto. The Senate passed its version of the Farm Bill in December 2007 by a veto-proof vote of 79-14, the most substantial support of any Farm Bill in history, according to Harkin. The House approved a Farm Bill in July 2007 by a vote of 231-191, with most Republicans voting against the measure due to inclusion of a tax increase that has since been dropped from the legislation.
Efforts are now underway to gather bipartisan support for the final conference package. Representative Bob Goodlatte (VA), the top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, met with the President on May 7 and encouraged him to sign the bill. That same day, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, whose state benefits substantially from cotton and rice subsidy programs, also urged Administration support. “I told the White House this morning if they do veto it, my goal will be to override them,” Chambliss said.
2009 Appropriations Will Wait
Congress has initiated the budget and appropriations process for fiscal year 2009, but final decisions on spending for government programs next year may not be made for some time. Capitol Hill sources tell Foodlinks America that final 2009 appropriations may be postponed until February, following the inauguration of a new President.
The House and Senate each passed a budget resolution in March. However, a conference committee has yet to complete action on a single budget document to fix spending priorities for next year. Once the budget is completed, appropriators will assign dollar amounts to various categories for program operations in fiscal year 2009.
Congress will likely mark up individual appropriations bills by mid-June, but then hold the legislation at the committee level. A continuing resolution would be enacted before the October 1 start of the 2009 fiscal year would maintain programs at current levels until a newly-elected Administration can determine its spending priorities.
Lawmakers are struggling to carve out enough discretionary funding in the 2009 agriculture appropriations for the WIC Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) to maintain caseload levels. The Bush Administration proposed to eliminate the CSFP, and its funding allocation for WIC is inadequate. “This is the worst [food program] budget we’ve ever seen,” said a Capitol Hill staffer. “Everything is gutted. WIC is ridiculously short.”
In addition to the fiscal year 2009 budget and spending process, Congress is working on a fiscal year 2008 supplemental appropriations bill to make program adjustments that may possibly include another economic stimulus package to address the looming recession. More than half a dozen different supplemental bills have been proposed, as legislative leaders vie to fashion a package the Administration can support and will not veto. Commented one congressional aide: “The elephants are fighting and we’re trying hard not to be the grass.”
Food Banks Hungry for Help, More Food
Calling hunger in America “a significant crisis,” with food banks “ABSOLUTELY overwhelmed by demand,” Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of America’s Second Harvest, urged Congress on May 2 to finish the Farm Bill and, in addition, provide an immediate $100 million in emergency funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) to alleviate hunger problems nationwide.
Escarra cited an April 29, 2008 survey of nearly 20 percent of her organization’s 205 member food banks “that found 100 percent of food banks seeing an increase in the number of clients served within the past year.” The national increase is averaging about 15-20 percent, but is even higher in some locales.
Second Harvest says its network is confronting three major challenges: (1) substantially reduced donations of federally purchased commodities; (2) a rise in the number of people seeking emergency food because of the declining economy; and (3) rapidly rising food prices. “Any one of these challenges would be hard to deal with alone, but they have compounded and we have a significant crisis on our hands,” claimed Escarra.
Escalating need has resulted in a reduction in aid provided to hungry families. Pressure from the three factors cited above has caused almost half of Second Harvest food banks to reduce the variety and amount of food provided to recipient agencies. “Of those [food banks] surveyed, 84 percent indicated they are currently unable to adequately meet the increased demand without having to reduce the amount of food they distribute to the people they serve,” Escarra noted. “Supply is not keeping up with demand,” she said.
For additional information, view the Second Harvest news release at: http://www.secondharvest.org/news_room/2008_press_releases/050208.html.
Meeting Addresses Food System Changes
More than 500 activists from across the nation met outside Phoenix at the end of April to begin charting a shift in the U.S. food system to one that is more “healthy, green, fair, and affordable.” The annual Food and Society meeting of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), one of the largest charitable funders of food, farm, and agriculture projects, was not a “conference” this year, but rather a “Gathering for Good Food” to spark a movement and encourage others to join it.
Foundation officials hoped by bringing together “many who are striving to co-create and sustain this growing movement” in a non-conventional meeting format they could help “connect and inspire leadership and community.” Day one of the Gathering explored the “Village Square” concept, introducing “a marketplace for the exchange of goods and ideas” that highlighted a variety of projects fostering Good Food, from food policy councils and healthy corner store initiatives to immigrant farming programs and theater projects based around food.
Day two was reserved for “Open Space” deliberations, with participants choosing and posting topics in an attempt to draw others into a discussion group. Attendees huddled on more than 80 subjects dealing with personal improvement, such as “media literacy” and “connecting youth and adults,” and substantive issues, like “climate change,” “structural racism in the food system,” and how “affordable” is defined in the food system the group is attempting to build.
The open and wide-ranging agenda for the Gathering is perhaps reflective of the internal re-examination going on within WKKF. The “big changes” for the Foundation, announced at the Phoenix meeting, may not be so transparent to the outsider. “Food Systems and Rural Development,” currently one of the eight program areas supported by WKKF will be consolidated into the “Food, Health, and Well-Being” category of the five new program emphases. Of greater consequence for the WKKF grantee world, however, was the announcement that future food system funding will be geographically concentrated in Michigan (Kellogg’s home state), Mississippi, and New Mexico.
Obesity Round-Up
New data on fat cells may help weight reduction: A study by Swedish researchers has uncovered new information on the behavior of fat cells that may help solve the obesity epidemic. Although about 10 percent of an adult’s fat cells die each year, they are replaced, with the total number of fat cells in the body remaining the same year after year. Adults who lose or gain weight do so through changes in the size of their fat cells, not in the number of them. Findings were published in the May 5, 2008 issue of the journal Nature.
On the other hand, children, up until about age 20, may increase the number of fat cells in their body, meaning that people who got fat during childhood may find it more difficult to lose weight later in life. Even liposuction or “stomach stapling” will not reduce the number of fat cells. These discoveries have both genetic and dietary implications, for if scientists can understand how fat cells are replenished, it might be possible to design drugs that can help keep the weight off. However, “I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as ‘take a pill, lose weight, problem solved’,” said lead researcher Kristy Spalding of the Karolinaka Institute in Stockholm. For more details, go to: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080505/full/news.2008.800.html.
School changes can aid obesity prevention: School-based interventions with multiple components can be effective in preventing the development of overweight and obesity in fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, according to a study published in the April 1, 2008 issue of Pediatrics. A study conducted among more than 1,300 students at 10 Philadelphia elementary schools found that a multi-faceted approach using nutrition policy, social marketing, and family outreach cut the incidence of overweight by half.
“We incorporated healthy eating into every part of the school day in order to have a greater impact on students,” said Sandy Sherman, director of nutrition education at The Food Trust, a local non-profit working on food issues. Researchers focused on school because children spend so much time there and eat at least one or two meals a day there. Subjects in the study received lower-fat meals, nutrition education, rewards for healthy snacking, and encouragement to be more physically active at home. After two years, only 7.5 percent of children in intervention schools became overweight versus 15 percent in a control group. African American students saw even greater reductions. “The intervention fundamentally changed the school environment,” Sherman noted. For additional details, see: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/121/4/e794.
USDA to Buy Bonus Pork
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced plans to purchase up to $50 million of pork products for child nutrition and domestic food assistance programs, including The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). USDA will survey states to assess how much product they will accept for shipping later in the year and then request bids from pork producers. For details, see: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/…=true&contentid=2008/05/0115.xml.
Reports from the Field
Increasing food prices and stagnant household resources are a problem nationwide, including in the Panhandle and South Plains region of Texas, as described in this article from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal of April 20, 2008:
Amber Lovette has had a series of medical problems since a car accident three decades ago when she hurt her back. Despite her ailments, the 56-year-old Lubbock resident always thought she could be independent, at least until her 60s or even 70s. Since her husband died of a heart attack three years ago, however, a new reality has set in for Lovette. She needs public assistance because the $600 in Social Security disability payments she gets a month is not enough to live on.
“This is very hard for me to accept,” the former nurse said of the additional $58 worth of food stamps she gets a month, the daily free meals she gets from the volunteer Meals on Wheels program and other kinds of occasional public assistance. “I was raised not to ask for help.”
Lovette and her late husband never had any children – nor did they save any money – but her story is the story of thousands of other people in the South Plains and Panhandle, particularly families with young children. The economic crisis the United States and other nations are facing is hitting the region so hard even people who were once too proud to ask for help are now doing it because otherwise they’d go hungry, advocates for the poor say. “People are hurting,” said Janie Singleton, executive director of the High Plains Food Bank in Amarillo, which distributes food in 26 counties in the Panhandle. “The price of most basic foods has gone up considerably, so it’s hard for many families, especially for those with young children, to make ends meet.”
Food prices, which have been steadily rising for more than a year, have hit American consumers hard, the U.S. Labor Department reported last week. Eggs have gone up 41 percent, milk 26 percent and bread 13 percent, mainly because of rapidly rising transportation costs triggered by the all-time high price of fuel.
To complicate matters, the large supermarkets and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the traditional donors food banks depend on, are not giving as much as they used to, Singleton said. Yet the number of people asking for free food keeps growing, forcing the institution to raise money to pay for the food it can’t get for free.
It is the same story at the South Plains Food Bank in Lubbock, which distributes food in 21 counties in the area, said executive director David Weaver. “We’re seeing big challenges, just like in Amarillo,” Weaver said. “We’re seeing more and more people turning to assistance while the food that we get from donors has been declining. I am feeling a bigger squeeze now than before.”
The growing number of people asking for help does not surprise him. In the Lubbock area, especially in rural counties, about 20 percent of the population is poor, Weaver said. That’s $20,650 or less annually for a family of four, according to the federal government. And with prices of just about everything rapidly rising, it is virtually impossible for low-income people, especially seniors on fixed incomes, to have enough money for food, Singleton and Weaver said.
Altogether, there are 16 counties in the South Plains/Panhandle region with large percentages of poor people, and some, like Crosby, Floyd, Garza, and Potter, are as destitute as any of the 43 counties along or near the border with Mexico, according to a recent study by the Austin-based think tank Center for Public Policy Priorities. “This is a very serious problem,” said Celia Hagert, senior policy analyst at the Center who specializes on food and nutritional policy. Statewide, about three million people are or run the risk of being hungry because they don’t have enough money to buy food and get little or no government help, Hagert said. “(But) rural areas like West Texas tend to have more poverty because they are more isolated and don’t have a good public transportation system,” she said. “The people in rural areas can’t always get the help they need.”
Reyes Pequeno, a community organizer in Post, a rural town in Garza County, said Hagert is absolutely right. “Our greatest need is in the rural communities,” Pequeno said. “In the cities there is more help available.” Like other advocates for the poor in West Texas, Pequeno worries that a good number of people in rural areas, particularly the elderly, may often go hungry because they don’t have transportation to a food pantry or to a soup kitchen. “This is an issue we’re addressing,” she said.
Singleton said that in December the High Plains Food Bank hired a full-time employee just to go all over the area where food is distributed to make sure people who need help get it. “We’re very happy with her work,” Zack Wilson, the food bank’s public relations director, said of Nellie Ramon, who travels throughout the area almost every weekday and has helped many low-income people register for food stamps, especially in the rural areas. “She goes to Dumas, to Perryton, to rural communities with her laptop.”
Many of the people she has reached out to didn’t even know they qualified for food stamps or other government assistance, said Ramon, whose official title at the High Plains Food Bank is Outreach Coordinator. “These are people who work but don’t make enough money,” she said. “And because they work they didn’t think they qualified for help.” Weaver said the South Plains Food Bank also hired an outreach coordinator and the number of people getting help, especially food stamps, has risen considerably since she came aboard last year.
Like food bank officials in other regions of the state, Singleton and Weaver are anxiously waiting for Congress to approve the Farm Bill because they said the House of Representatives approved a provision that calls for a substantial funding increase to the Food Stamp Program. In addition, through the Farm Bill, the USDA gives food banks some products such as rice, pinto beans, peanut butter, canned vegetables, corn flakes, juices and fruits, Wilson said. And though the bill has had a series of delays, it looks like it will be approved around Memorial Day.
At the state level, the best the Texas Legislature can do is to promote programs that generate more employment and better-paying jobs, particularly in rural areas, said Rep. Joe Heflin, D-Crosbyton. Heflin’s House District 85 has the largest number of poor people of any of the six House districts in the South Plains/Panhandle region. “You’d think that out here where we have the lowest unemployment in the state, why do we have so much poverty?” Heflin asked. “Is it because wages are too low?” What the Legislature may have to do when it’s back in session next year is to focus on the education system so that more low-income people in Texas go to college so that they are prepared for better-paying jobs, he said.
The House County Affairs Committee, of which he is a member, is already discussing how to keep people in rural areas and how to create better-paying jobs in such areas. “We had a very interesting meeting with (Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd) Staples, and we are talking about a possible meeting in Amarillo,” Heflin said. “We want to hear what people have to say because we can’t have so much poverty … not in West Texas or anywhere in our state.”
Small Bites
Paper or Plastic?
A petroleum byproduct: The 100 billion plastic bags used annually in the U.S. take 12 million barrels of oil to produce.
Plastic saves energy: It takes four times more energy to manufacture a paper bag than it does to make a plastic bag.
Paper pollutes: Production of paper bags produces 70 percent more air pollution and 50 times more water pollution than making plastic bags.
Plastic is forever: It may take a thousand years for a plastic bag to degrade.
Recycling practice needed: Only one to three percent of plastic bags are recycled compared to 10 to 15 percent of paper bags.
Refuse or reuse: Consumers should decline to take a bag for purchases that are small or easy to carry or reuse the bags they have.
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