TEFAP Alliance Blog

Foodlinks America - July 7, 2006

In this issue:

· Advocates Push for CFNP Funding
· Trade Bill Impasse May Affect Farm Bill
· Minimum Wage Stagnation Nears Record
· Food Stamp Participation is Rising
· New Welfare Rules May Add to Hunger Problems
· Obesity Round-Up
· 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@281.com.

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@281.com.

Advocates Push for CFNP Funding

Federal appropriations for the Community Food and Nutrition Program (CFNP) next year are still uncertain, but anti-hunger activists from around the nation, led by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) in Washington, D.C., are making a concerted effort to re-start the program. Funded at $7.218 million in fiscal year 2005, Congress provided no money for the CFNP this year, cutting off support to hundreds of state and local projects addressing the food and nutrition needs of low-income people.

“This is crunch time for anti-hunger advocates to recapture funding for a program that was zeroed out for the first time in decades in the fiscal year 2006 appropriations process,” noted FRAC staff in a recent email. “The House fiscal year 2007 funding bill [for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Departments] contains no CFNP monies. Getting CFNP funding into the Senate version, therefore, is critical,” said FRAC. “FRAC is asking the Senate to return to its historic pattern of strong support for CFNP and its insistence on funding in any conference report,” added the organization’s legal director, Ellen Vollinger.

FRAC and its allies are focusing on building support in the 11 “small states” that receive a minimum of $15,000 when program funding exceeds $7 million. Those states are Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to mark up its Labor-HHS-Education funding bill later this month.

Trade Bill Impasse May Affect Farm Bill

The breakdown earlier this month of international negotiations on new trade agreements could have a direct effect on domestic nutrition assistance programs next year. The failure of representatives at the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Doha, Qatar to agree on a global trade structure could delay reauthorization of U.S. agriculture programs under the Farm Bill, which expires September 30, 2007, the end of federal fiscal year 2007.

The Farm Bill is a crucial piece of legislation that provides legislative authority for the Food Stamp Program, The Temporary Emergency Assistance Program (TEFAP), the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), and the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP). Congress has been waiting for the conclusion of the Doha Round of WTO meetings to begin debating the 2007 Farm Bill in earnest.

American and European leaders have agreed in principle to reduce government subsidies and open their markets to give developing countries greater opportunities to sell their farm products abroad. In exchange, however, developed nations want Third World countries to reduce tariffs on manufactured goods. U.S. price supports for agriculture could potentially be reduced by as much as one-third if an agreement is struck. But a WTO deal now seems unlikely in the near future.

“Our big task was to agree on how to deliver on the Doha mandate to ’substantially improve’ market access in agriculture through programs of fundamental reform and by reducing barriers to industrial goods,” said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johannes in a July 1 statement. “We don’t have all the answers yet, but the central question of market access is squarely on the table.”

The failure to reach agreement at Doha increases the odds that the 2002 Farm Bill will be extended, leaving programs intact, but also diminishing the possibility for improvements or increased funding in food stamps and the other programs. Although it is considered unlikely that Congress will approve a Farm Bill extension this year, it will likely be a topic of heated debate in the 110th Congress that convenes in January 2007.

Minimum Wage Stagnation Nears Record

The federal minimum wage – currently $5.15 per hour – is at its lowest point in 50 years. It has not been raised for nearly a decade. As of December 2006, this will mark the longest time that Congress has gone without raising the minimum wage, notes the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

And each year that Congress fails to increase the wage floor, the purchasing power of low-income families is eroded further. Lack of household resources results in hunger. Emergency food providers consistently report that more and more families with working adults are showing up at their doorstep at the end of each month.

“A full-time job that pays the minimum wage just doesn’t provide enough money to support a family today,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton during debate last month on a bill by Edward Kennedy (D-MA) to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next two years. “We have to acknowledge that fact and do something about it. As a country, we cannot accept that a single mother with two children who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earns $10,700 a year – let me say this again: $10,700 a year. That is almost $6,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of three,” stated Senator Clinton.

“No one who works for a living should have to live in poverty,” added Senator Kennedy, whose bill was defeated.

Food Stamp Participation is Rising

Nationwide participation in the Food Stamp Program increased for the third consecutive year in fiscal year 2004, according to a statistical analysis done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and reported on June 30, 2006. In 2004, of the 38 million individuals estimated to be eligible to receive food stamp benefits, 60 percent enrolled in the program, up from 56 percent in fiscal year 2003.

Moreover, 71 percent of total possible benefits were distributed. Participation rates were found to be highest among families with children and people in the lowest income households. Over 50 percent of all food stamp recipients are children under age 18.

The increases were driven by revisions in food stamp policy made in 2001 that simplified program rules and changes in the law enacted in 2002 that renewed eligibility for legal immigrants. In addition, USDA has worked with and funded state and local agencies to implement outreach projects to reach eligible non-participants. For more information on the Food Stamp Program, including participation, visit: http://wwww.fns.usda.gov.

Current food stamp participation for March 2006 (the latest month for which data is available) has grown to 26.2 million people.

New Welfare Rules May Add to Hunger Problems

Revised guidelines for what can be counted to meet work requirements in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the federal government’s main welfare support mechanism for families with children, reduce state flexibility and may increase the number of families in need of emergency food. The new regulations were issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the June 28, 2006 Federal Register.

Welfare analysts found the new rules to be unduly restrictive. “Unfortunately, the Administration chose to adopt rigid rules that deny states the flexibility to prepare families for employment most effectively,” commented Sharon Parrott, director of welfare reform and income support for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C. “Some states will no longer get credit for successful programs they now run,” she added. Under the revised regulations, definitions of the work activities under which a state can place a parent with disabilities or other barriers to employment will be circumscribed. For example, participation in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, even if needed as a precursor to employment or training, will be limited.

“In the late 1990s, in a better economy with more spending on child care and other work supports, states had a hard time reaching even the lower work standards,” Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, told Foodlinks America. “Now, with fewer jobs available and less money for work supports, states will have no choice but to throw more people off the rolls – whether or not they have jobs,” Berg noted. “The new rules will likely increase poverty, homelessness, and hunger – the absolute opposite of their stated goal of helping people achieve self-sufficiency,” he said.

Obesity Round-Up

· Race, poverty, and food access affect diet: Ethnicity, income, and where you live are all key factors in the rate and level of obesity, the government has confirmed in a new report issued in July 2006. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention has released a new research report titled, The Role of Race and Poverty in Access to Foods That Enable Individuals to Adhere to Dietary Guidelines, which focuses on the social and environmental factors that influence dietary intake.

The CDC found that the distribution of fast food restaurants and supermarkets that provide options for meeting the dietary guidelines differed according to racial distribution and poverty rates. In particular, mixed-race or high-poverty white neighborhoods, as well as all African American areas – regardless of income – were less likely than predominantly white higher-income communities to have access to foods that enable individuals to make healthy choices.

Those findings led the CDC to conclude that, “Without access to healthy food choices, individuals cannot make positive changes to their diets. If certain eating behaviors are required to reduce chronic disease and promote health, then some communities will continue to have disparities in critical health outcomes unless we increase access to healthy food.” To read more, see: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2006/jul/05_0217.htm.

· Urban environments a factor in obesity: City planners and physical fitness experts believe that to address the nation’s obesity problem, neighborhoods must be re-designed so that people can get around without driving. “We’ve built an unhealthy world in a lot of different ways,” said James Sallis, a San Diego State University psychology professor in a recent speech at the annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Sallis pointed out that virtually everything American society has done over the past century has promoted sedentary lifestyles – from movies and television to video games to individual vehicles like Segway scooters – and made it easier for us to get fatter. He contends that things will change only when people demand walkable development and public transportation policies that fund sidewalks, parks and bike paths, not just highways.

Communities that combine shops, offices, residential dwellings, and parks, like Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood, built on the site of the city’s old airport, can lead to change, commented Tom Gleason, a developer. “People will walk if you give them that opportunity,” he noted.

Reports from the Field

· On June 14, 2005, The Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy article on hunger among children, datelined from Tyler, Texas. Excerpts are provided below.

Seven-year-old Cody Lozano and his 9-year-old sister Cherokee hurried into their house on a recent Friday afternoon and emptied their school backpacks. On the kitchen table, next to a family Bible and a pile of bills, each child laid out a box of Special K cereal, a carton of milk, a package of peanut-butter crackers, a cup of fruit cocktail, a bag of animal crackers, a carton of apple juice, a pull-top can of beans and franks, and one of rice and beans.

It wasn’t a weekend homework assignment. It was their weekend breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“Without this food, I don’t know what we would do,” says their mother, Karen Lozano. In a town where the oil boom once created dozens of millionaires and where azaleas and roses now attract tourists, Ms. Lozano, 41, and her two youngest children sit in a living room beneath a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Family health problems and sporadic work for her husband have reduced their income and increased their expenses, she says.

“Last week it was, ‘Do we buy groceries or pay the water bill?’ This week, it is groceries or the gas bill,” she says. “With the backpacks, I know that at least there’s something for the kids to eat.”

Cody and Cherokee are members of the Backpack Club at Douglas Elementary School. Every Friday during the school year, just before the final bell, they and 70 schoolmates from low-income families rush into the auditorium and wait in line for backpacks filled with food. In the past year, thousands of other children have begun forming similar Friday afternoon lines in schools across 30 states, from big cities like Chicago, to postcard places like Sonoma County, California, to rural hamlets surrounded by corn and wheat fields like Hawkeye, Iowa.

On their shoulders, the children carry the backpacks as well as the weight of America’s hunger paradox: want and plenty. The backpacks are an emergency fix to a problem that has defied solution, despite a rising economy and tens of billions of dollars of government spending on nutrition programs, including food stamps, school lunch, and aid to mothers and young children.

“Hunger is a hidden issue, particularly in Tyler, where unemployment is low and there’s a lot of economic activity,” says Robert Bush, executive director of the East Texas Food Bank. “But every day, we touch people who have to make hard choices about food: Pay medical bills or buy food, repair car or buy food.”

“On Friday at lunch, I see a kind of panic in some children that I didn’t see before. They eat as much as they can,” says Kim Matthews, youth-services coordinator in the Chapel Hill, Texas school district. “Then on Monday at breakfast, they not only eat the food on their tray, but the food on the trays of the five kids next to them.”

While some backpack carriers say they jealously guard their food – one boy says he hides it under his bed – others say they share it with their families. At Annie Sims Elementary School in Mount Pleasant, Texas, a 10-year-old named Low said he shared his milk with his grandmother, his crackers with an aunt, and his Apple Jacks cereal with his older sister. Seven-year-old Leonard asked the school counselor for an extra jar of peanut butter for his mother.

The backpacks are for the most part filled with child-friendly food: nutritious, easy to open, and nothing requiring stove-top cooking. Empty backpacks are returned by students and refilled for the next week. The food in each backpack costs between $2 and $3, and, once filled, weighs seven to 10 pounds.

“It’s heavy,” said a fifth-grader named Jocelyn as she hoisted her backpack at Jewett Elementary School in the Waterloo, Iowa, school system. “But it’s a good heavy.”

· Another story about childhood hunger ran in the June 15, 2006 edition of The Johnson County Sun in Overland Park, Kansas:
“The face of hunger in Greater Kansas City is increasingly the face of a child,” said Karen Siebert, Community Relations Manager for Harvesters [the Kansas City, Missouri food bank] in a statement to mark June 6 as National Hunger Awareness Day.
A United Community Services report says poverty is rising in the county, indicated by increased demands for emergency assistance, more use of food stamps and a rapid growth in the county’s official poverty rate, based on the U.S. Census. More than 19,100 Johnson County residents sought emergency assistance from community-based organizations in 2004, 23 percent more than in 2003.
Most of the households Harvesters serves are in Missouri but the trend is no different in Johnson County, said Bob Balla, director of Village Presbyterian Church Food Pantry and Clothes Closet, one of the church’s outreach ministries and the biggest food pantry in the county.
Between 2003 and 2005, the pantry served 25 percent more new households, or people who had never before been served, Balla said. “From 406 in 2003, the number grew to 506,” he said. “I have 1,200 to 1,300 active files at any one time. We serve 800 to 850 households a month.”
Balla said setbacks, including job losses or a major or prolonged illness, drive people to seek emergency food assistance. “I have had more than a handful of executives come who have lost jobs, run through their unemployment benefits and savings, and don’t know which way to turn,” Balla said. “Anyone with education, corporate or professional experience would find it hard to break into the minimum wage area. And all these guys want to do is put food on the table.”
Small Bites

How much did you eat today?: Americans collectively eat 100 pounds of chocolate every second.

The adult sweet tooth: Americans age 18 and older consume 65 percent of the candy produced in the U.S. annually.

A freeze on fresh spuds: In 1960, Americans ate 81 pounds a year of fresh potatoes and 7.6 pounds of frozen potatoes. In 2004, the averages were 46.5 pounds of fresh and 56.4 pounds of frozen potatoes – mostly eaten as french fries.

At least until the climate changes: Some Eskimos use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.

The top banana, almost: Bananas are the world’s most popular fruit, after tomatoes.

What a difference a century makes: In 1901, food was the single biggest expense for an American household, claiming 42.5 percent of income. By 2002, that had dropped to 13.1 percent.

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