TEFAP Alliance Blog

February 2005

In This Issue:
• 2006 Budget Proposal Could Have Long-term Effects on Food Programs
• Food Donation Legislation Re-Introduced
• More States Opt for Food
• Food Banks Benefit from Tomato Price Wars
• Oh, Deer! A New Record in Wisconsin
• Views from the Field
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2006 Budget Proposal Could Have Long-term Effects on Food Programs
President George W. Bush sent his fiscal year 2006 budget to Congress on February 7 and although it contained few immediate cuts in federal food and nutrition programs, the long-term implications of the budget framework and deficit reduction plans, if enacted, could be significant. For TEFAP, the President proposed level funding of $140 million for commodity purchases and $50 million for distribution and storage. Authority to transfer up to $10 million in food funds for distribution purposes may be included in the final appropriations bill, as it has been the past two years.
One program that is proposed for elimination is the Community Food and Nutrition Program (CFNP), which has helped dozens of community action agencies and food banks with capacity-building for emergency food distribution operations. The budget would not only terminate CFNP but would end the entire Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), the authorizing legislation for CFNP.
Beyond CFNP, the largest reduction in food program benefits to low-income Americans next year would come in the Food Stamp Program. Welfare recipients in 11 states who receive non-cash benefits (such as child care, education or training) under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program would no longer be categorically eligible for food stamps. Instead, they would be subjected to normal eligibility procedures. This policy change, if implemented, would only save $57 million in fiscal 2006, but is projected to reduce food stamp spending by $1.1 billion over a 10-year period.
However, other than that one revision, “The budget includes resources to fully fund estimated Food Stamp participation and also provides a $3 billion contingency fund should actual costs exceed the estimated level,” according to remarks by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. The budget also proposes to provide the WIC Program with $5.5 billion next year, enough to support assistance to 8.5 million participants, along with a $125 million contingency fund.
Funding for other child nutrition programs – including school lunch, school breakfast, child care feeding, and summer food – would increase by about $634 million overall, reflecting modest increases in participation. Support for elderly nutrition programs would remain unchanged from fiscal year 2005 levels.
With the Bush budget calling for increased spending on defense, homeland security, and military operations, the bulk of reductions needed to reduce the federal deficit would fall on domestic programs. However, two-thirds of the current $2.3 billion in domestic spending now goes to mandatory entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. The remaining one-third goes for discretionary programs – like the TEFAP distribution and storage account – which would be vulnerable to large reductions. The budget proposes a “hard freeze” on domestic discretionary spending (other than homeland security) for five years that will be enforced by binding caps.
Freezing spending at current levels for a broad array of discretionary programs would save only about $10 billion next year, far short of the numbers the President is looking for to cut the budget deficit in half over the next five years. To reach the deficit reduction goal, cuts would be required in most programs, even entitlements. “You can’t get there from here unless you look at entitlements,” commented Senate Budget Committee chair Judd Gregg (R-NH). “Because that’s where the money is.”

Food Donation Legislation Re-Introduced
On January 24, 2005, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) again introduced the Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act (S. 94) to amend the federal tax code to provide for charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory. Identical legislation introduced by Lugar last session passed the Senate and, though a similar bill passed the House, the legislation did not make it out of conference committee.
The bill “would make it easier for farmers and small business owners to contribute products to food banks, pantries, and homeless shelters by allowing the deduction of the full market value of food donated. Currently, this deduction is available to large corporations, but not small businesses,” said Lugar. “We should support this private sector activity, which not only feeds people, but also strengthens community bonds and demonstrates the power of faith, charity, and civic involvement,” he added.
In a show of bi-partisan support for the bill, Senators Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Gordon Smith (R-OR) joined Lugar as original co-sponsors. The bill w as referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

More States Opt for Food
Following the passage of final appropriations for fiscal year 2005 in January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last month offered states the opportunity to convert up to $10 million in TEFAP food dollars to storage and distribution funding. According to Department officials, most states decided to augment their storage/distribution allocation.
However, this year nine states opted to keep the money – $1.44 million worth – for food, about double the fiscal 2004 totals. Last year, just four states chose to retain $744,000 for food purchases. USDA staff speculated that the slowdown in the provision of federal bonus commodities and the nationwide decline in emergency food donations overall likely accounted for the decision by more states to keep their funds in the food column.

Food Banks Benefit from Tomato Price Wars
Florida farmers late last month donated a million pounds of tomatoes to East Coast food banks to help counter the public’s notion that there is still a shortage of tomatoes. A series of hurricanes wiped out Florida tomato harvests in late 2004 and resulted in a short, sharp spike in retail prices, but the industry re-planted and recovered quickly.
“We’re looking for some coverage. We weren’t the bad guys” causing high tomato prices, said one Florida grower. Growers blamed retailers for keeping prices high after the end of the shortage.
If the tomatoes were not sent out to food banks, they probably would rot in the field with prices too low to make the harvest worthwhile, said Samantha Winters, spokesperson for the Florida Tomato Committee, a regulatory and marketing body that orchestrated the donation. Food banks “are really lacking in resources right now, especially food donations,” noted Winters.

Oh, Deer! A New Record in Wisconsin
Wisconsin hunters donated enough deer this past fall to provide 500,000 pounds of venison to the state’s food pantries, the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reported on January 16, 2005. A record 10,938 deer were donated through a program administered by DNR, which pays about $50 to butcher shops for each deer processed and donated. A total of 121 processors in 53 counties participated in the program last year. Funding to pay for the processing comes from a $1 surcharge on all hunting licenses.
DNR noted that the increase in donations likely resulted from expansion of the state’s “Earn-a-Buck” program, which required hunters in some parts of Wisconsin to shoot an antlerless deer before killing a buck.

Views from the Field
• Why households on the edge financially turn to the emergency food network was explained recently to the media by Larry Sly, director of the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties in California. “With the cost of living going up, and income not rising at the same rate, you’ve got people who may have made a stable life for themselves, but at such a low economic level that they can’t make it,” Sly was quoted as saying in the January 2, 2005 San Jose Mercury News. “Food is the one piece they can negotiate on.”
• Others in the Bay Area echoed Sly’s analysis. “The cost of living has surpassed people’s means. It’s as simple as that,” Jessica Bartholow, director of outreach for the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland, California told North Gate News Online on December 30, 2004. “The need in the community is always great,” added Kris Jensen, the food bank’s director of development. “We never have enough food to meet that need.”
• The number of Texans receiving food stamps has increased 60 percent over the past four years to 2.2 million, but is still some 600,000 people below the participation level a decade earlier. As a result, “Food banks and food pantries say they’re being inundated with people asking for help,” reported the Dallas Morning News on January 23, 2005. “It’s unbelievably crowded every hour we’re open,” Larry James, president of Central Dallas Ministries, which operates two food pantries, told the paper. “It’s an incredible rising demand.”
• The food pantry at the East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corporation (ECKAN) in Lawrence, Kansas used to see about 15 families a month, according to an article in the January 3, 2005 Lawrence Journal-World. Until the pantry office was moved downtown. Since the move, the five to ten families a month who had previously used the pantry are now supplemented by 100 to 150 households who have never used the pantry before. “We were totally unprepared for what we’ve seen over here,” said ECKAN human services coordinator Jeanette Collier. “It was unbelievable.”
• “A growing number of Pennsylvania households are seeking the help of private charities in order to avoid hunger,” the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center reported in its December 2004 newsletter. “Based on a survey of 1,318 food pantries, the Hunger Action Coalition determined that the typical food pantry distributed groceries to 146 households during the month of October [2004]. The comparable figure during October 2003 was 138 households. The figure during October 2002 was 121 households. In recent years, however, more households with paychecks have joined the ranks of the needy. In some Pennsylvania pantries, low-wage households now comprise nearly 70 percent of those seeking help.”

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Foodlinks America is published 24 times a year by California Emergency Foodlink and distributed by Weinberg & Vauthier Consulting, 6412 CR 116, Burnet, Texas 78611; Zy Weinberg and Barbara Vauthier, Editors; email: bvauthier@281.com.

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