TEFAP Alliance Blog

Foodlinks America - August 3, 2007

In this issue:

• Taking A Break
• House Passes Farm Bill Renewal
• Farm Bill Action Shifts to the Senate
• Proposed Legislation
• School Food News and Notes
• 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@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.

Taking A Break

In keeping with its publication schedule of 24 issues per year, Foodlinks America will take its semi-annual break this month. There will be no issue sent on August 17; the next newsletter will be published on August 31, 2007.

House Passes Farm Bill Renewal

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a five-year reauthorization of the Farm Bill on July 27, 2007, that leaves the bulk of the nation’s food and agriculture policies and programs intact. Major cuts in subsidy payments for commodity crops, which had been proposed to provide additional funds for nutrition initiatives and other changes, were soundly defeated. Support generally broke down along party lines and the final bill passed by a vote of 231 to 191, with 19 Republicans joining 212 Democrats in endorsing the package.

Efforts to substantially reduce crop subsidies, supported by the Bush Administration and a number of Members of Congress and embodied in an amendment proposed by Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on July 26, were defeated by a 309 to 117 tally. In what many observers denounced as merely a token change, only subsidy recipients getting more than $1 million per year in federal payments will be affected – some 7,000 growers nationwide.

Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the payment limit “a good first step to reform,” and claimed that, “Future Farm Bills will never look the same as those of the past,” others disagreed. “The bill put forth [today] misses a major opportunity,” stated Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johannes. “The time really is right for reform in farm policy,” he noted.

Much of the floor debate focused more on tax provisions than on farm policy. Democrats offered and ultimately passed a provision requiring foreign corporations operating in the U.S. to pay taxes on their earnings. The estimated $4 billion generated by this change were devoted to the expansion of nutrition assistance programs, primarily food stamps. House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) also got support to chop $4.8 billion from conservation programs to support other changes in the Farm Bill.

The newly-titled Farm, Nutrition, and Energy Act (H.R. 2419) that ultimately passed the House contained a significant boost for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Mandatory funds for TEFAP food purchases would be increased from the current $140 million level to $250 million a year, beginning in fiscal year 2008. Allotments for food purchases would then be indexed annually for inflation, rising to $273 million by fiscal year 2012. The authorized level for storage and distribution funds would be increased from the current $60 million to $100 million a year, though that allocation would continue to be subject to the annual appropriations process.

Many of the other changes in the House Farm Bill would increase benefits in and access to the Food Stamp Program. Provisions in the bill would: rename the program the Secure Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SSNAP); raise and index the standard deduction; increase the minimum benefit; lift the cap on dependent care expenses; update asset limits for inflation and exclude retirement and education accounts from consideration; exclude combat pay as income for military households; and allow states to use telephonic signatures for food stamp applications.

Other sections of the Farm Bill would: allocate more than $1.6 billion over five years to strengthen and support the fruit and vegetable industry through purchases, marketing, and research, including $350 million for an afterschool snack program; continue and expand the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP); authorize $30 million annually for an expansion of the Community Food Projects program, though funds would be subject to annual appropriations; and continue to provide $15 million in mandatory funding each year for the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program and allow additional discretionary funding up to $75 million annually by 2012.

In addition, the Farm Bill would: rename the Farmers’ Market Promotion Program as the Farmers’ Marketing Assistance Program and increase funding up to $10 million a year, with a set-aside for EBT promotion and technology; renew the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) and provide $5 million per year for the purchase of native and locally grown foods; continue national and international Hunger Fellows programs administered by the Congressional Hunger Center; support a new urban agriculture program; and authorize a study of “food deserts” and develop recommendations to eliminate them.

Although pundits credited House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) with managing “to piece together a Farm [Bill] that satisfied virtually every major and minor farm interest,” a bumpy road lies ahead. Not only must a Farm Bill pass the Senate (see story below) and be reconciled in a conference committee, the Administration has threatened to veto any bill that doesn’t meet its spending guidelines and crop support reform principles. Moreover, a late July ruling by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that current cotton subsidies – also part of the Farm Bill – are illegal and allows Brazil to impose billions of dollars worth of trade sanctions, further complicates Farm Bill outcomes.

Farm Bill Action Shifts to the Senate

With House passage of a 2007 Farm Bill (see story above), the stage is set for Senate consideration of a multi-year bill to reauthorize agriculture, food, and nutrition programs. To date, the Senate has not taken up the measure at all. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry chair Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, says he may have a draft bill ready as early as next week, but it is more likely the Committee’s proposed legislation will not be revealed until September. With the current Farm Bill set to expire on September 30, time is running out to complete a new bill before that deadline.

Meanwhile, Senators will face the same pressures and issues that the House had to reconcile – how to balance farm, food, and energy concerns addressed by the bill and identifying funds to pay for any increases in funding under the “pay-as-you-go” budget rule. International trade developments will also have a bearing on how the bill is structured.

Although Harkin is expected to incorporate a number of the House-passed provisions, the Senate bill “is not going to be a mirror image of the House bill,” Harkin said recently. A strong proponent of conservation programs, Harkin will undoubtedly work to restore billions of dollars for the Conservation Security Program that the House cut, reductions Harkin has labeled “totally unacceptable.” He will likely be using the new tax on foreign corporations enacted by House Democrats as one offset for new spending, noting that, “We are looking at doing basically the same thing over here. It’s hard to argue against that loophole.”

Price support payments for commodity crops will face additional scrutiny in the Senate, with a bipartisan group of Senators led by Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), pushing for much tighter limits on payments to wealthy growers. Harkin, too, supports a major reform of crop subsidies along with other Farm Bill changes. “We can’t afford to settle for an extension of the status quo – not in terms of budget, and not in terms of policy,” he concluded.

Proposed Legislation

Among bills recently introduced in the 110th session of the U.S. Congress are the following:

House Resolution (H.R.) 3110: Introduced by Representatives Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Todd Platts (R-PA), the Food Marketing in Schools Assessment Act would have the Department of Education study and report to Congress, by July 1, 2009, on the marketing of foods and beverages in middle and high schools.

For bill summary and status information, along with the text of legislation, visit: http://thomas.loc.gov and enter the bill number.

School Food News and Notes

Lunch prices rising: School boards across the nation are approving increases in lunch prices for paying students due to various factors, including gas prices, food costs, labor, and serving healthier items, said the School Nutrition Association (SNA) in a June 14, 2007 news release. Although the 17.4 million children who qualify for free or reduced price meals will not be directly affected, schools may be charging the 12.4 million students who pay full price more for their meals in order to help maintain overall cafeteria operations. For the 2006-2007 school year just completed, the national average cost of a school lunch was $1.80.

“School nutrition programs are expected to be financially self-sufficient, relying on revenue from paid school meals and federal reimbursements … instead of the general school district budget,” SNA noted. Lunch programs must cope with gasoline prices that have risen over eight percent in the past 12 months, an important factor for the many districts that must deliver food from a central facility to school sites. The cost of food is going up, too, fueled by higher milk prices and the diversion of corn, an ubiquitous commodity that is an ingredient in nearly every grocery item, for the production of ethanol. Labor costs, driven primarily by inflation in health care, are also increasing. Lastly, finding and using more healthful products to comply with federal wellness standards adopted that year, have likewise contributed to higher lunch costs.

“School nutrition programs nationally continue to be challenged by the increasing costs of operating their programs,” concluded SNA. “These challenges exist in an environment that routinely expects them to break even financially, or even contribute funds back to the general school district budget, while also providing high-quality, nutritious meals at a very low price to parents and students. Without additional financial support from the federal, state or local level, school nutrition programs will need to continue to raise school lunch prices in order to operate in the black.”

To learn more, see: http://www.schoolnutrition.org/Index.aspx?id=2439&tr=y&auid=2860084.

Summer meal gap persists: Many low-income children still go hungry when school is out. “Fewer than one out of every five eligible low-income children participated in the summer nutrition programs in 2006,” reported the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) in Washington, D.C. in its annual Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation: Summer Nutrition Status Report, released on July 24, 2007. Although 17.4 million low-income children got a nutritious daily meal during the regular school year, only 2.85 million – a mere 17.7 percent – got fed last year when school was out. That ratio is down from 22.2 percent in 2000.

To help address the need, FRAC recommends expansion of the Simplified Summer Food Service Program, which eases administrative burdens for the receipt of federal reimbursements for summer meals. “Over the past six years, the 13 states originally allowed to use the Simplified program have seen their summer numbers climb by 51 percent, while states never added to the pilot dropped by 16.5 percent,” FRAC noted.

Between 2005 and 2006, states with Simplified programs served 3.2 percent more meals, while participation in the remaining states dropped by 0.8 percent. Last year, the states with the highest summer participation were: California, the District of Columbia, Nevada, New Mexico, and New York. States with the lowest participation rates were: Alaska, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.

“The robust increase in participation in ’simplified’ states means Congress must act now to make it nationally available to all hungry children,” said Jim Weill, FRAC president. “Thousands of children in nearly every state are losing access to healthy meals, and we know a solution to this problem that works.” For additional details, go to: http://www.frac.org/Press_Release/07.24.07.html.

Commodity donation level announced: In addition to cash reimbursements for operating costs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also provides a specified amount of donated commodity foods to schools and institutions serving meals under the National School Lunch and Child and Adult Care Food Programs. USDA recently determined that the value of donated foods for the period of July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008 would be 18.75 cents per meal. For details, see the notice in the July 25, 2007 Federal Register at:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-14377.pdf.

Rules for afterschool snacks finalized: Procedures for the provision of afterschool snacks to at-risk children 18 years of age and younger through the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) were issued by USDA in the July 31, 2007 Federal Register. This final rule describes eligibility for afterschool care centers and stipulates CACFP meal pattern requirements for service of the snacks. For additional information, go to: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-14642.pdf.

Obesity Round-Up

Caution! Obesity may be contagious: Obesity can be transmitted from one person to another like a virus or a new fad, researchers reported recently in the results of a unique, national study. An increased risk of becoming obese can be spread from one spouse to another, among siblings, and from friend to friend. The study, involving more than 12,000 people who were tracked for 32 years, found that “social networks” may play an important role in determining an individual’s chances of gaining weight.

“It’s almost a cliché to speak of the obesity epidemic as being an epidemic. But we wanted to see if it really did spread from person to person like a fashion or a germ,” said Dr. Nicholas Chrislakis of Harvard Medical School, who led the research team. “And the answer is, ‘Yes, it does.’ We are finding evidence for a kind of social contagion,” he noted. “What speads is an idea. As people around you gain weight, your attitudes about what constitutes an acceptable body size changes, and you might follow suit and emulate that body size,” Chrislaks stated. “Once it starts, it’s hard to stop. It can spread like wildfire.”

Examining tens of thousands of close relationships in data from the Framingham Heart Study, conducted between 1971 and 2003 in that Boston suburb, researchers found that when one spouse became obese, there was a 37 percent chance the other would do so within two to four years. If a man became obese, his brother’s risk for obesity rose 40 percent. And among friends the effect was even more pronounced – between 57 and 171 percent, depending on the closeness of the friendship and regardless of geographic distance between the two friends.

“This is one of the most exciting studies in medical sociology that I’ve seen in decades,” said Richard Suzman, a research director at the National Institute of Aging, which funded the study. “I think these results are going to shift the way we think about some of these supposedly noncommunicable diseases.” Others also found a silver lining in the surprising results. “If these close social environments can promote a disease, they can also promote solutions to the disease,” said William Deitz of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “These same social networks might be used to turn a disease like obesity around.”

The study, published in the July 26, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, may be viewed at: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370.

TV food ads add pounds: Television commercials have been historically linked to poor eating habits in children as well as reduced physical activity, but a new British study goes a step further in documenting that the barrage of ads for fatty and sugary products makes a big difference in how much food children eat after seeing them. In two studies done in Liverpool, England, the eating responses of over 150 children, age five to 11, were monitored after seeing ads for toys and ads for foods, according to researchers from the University of Liverpool writing in the July 2007 issue of the scientific journal Appetite.

After the five to seven-year-olds saw food ads, they consumed 14 to 17 percent more calories than after the toy ads. Changes were even more dramatic among the nine to 11-year age group, which increased calories by up to 134 percent after watching food ads. Older children who were already overweight or obese not only ate more after viewing the ads, they were more likely to ingest the fatty foods promoted.

In our media-oriented society, visual prompts to increase food intake are common among advertisers. “From an evolutionary standpoint, if you see it you better eat it because you don’t know when it’s going to be there anymore,” commented Dr. David Levisky, a nutrition professor at Cornell University. “What the food companies have learned very well is how to take advantage of that process and get us to eat more by showing us food.”

Obese and undereducated: Obese girls are only half as likely to attend college as their normal weight counterparts, and that finding holds true regardless of race and economic status, according to a new study. “How kids perform in school has a lot to do with whether they fit in socially and how they relate to others,” remarked Robert Crosnoe, a University of Texas sociology professor and lead author of the study, which is to be published in the July 2007 issue of the journal Sociology of Education.

Crosnoe reviewed statistics for more than 11,000 adolescents in the U.S. and found that overweight girls are even less likely to attend college if obesity is not prevalent in their high school. Advancement to higher education is slightly less common for African American and Hispanic girls than for whites, but “Obesity predicts college enrollment even when I compare girls only to other girls of the same race,” said Crosnoe.

Others academics have noted similar patterns when family dynamics are examined. “The kids might receive less support from their parents,” surmised Deborah Carr, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, who has also studied the consequences of obesity. “Some people argue that it is such a powerful stigma even their parents can’t escape. Some of them are less wiling to leave the comfort of their home,” she added.

Reports from the Field

The City of Detroit, Michigan has become the quintessential “food desert,” as the last grocery store in town has closed. The Detroit News of July 5, 2007 offered this report on the situation:

Colleen Rogers isn’t looking forward to crossing the street to shop for even a few groceries. The store, a locally owned market, is convenient, just steps away from the beauty shop where she works on Livernois in Detroit. But what troubles her is its higher prices, lack of variety and the low quality of fruit, vegetables, meats and other food – staples Rogers could find every day in abundance at the Farmer Jack store near her home that is about to close. “Sure, there’s other grocery stores, but try finding something to eat in there,” said the 34-year-old skin care specialist. “You can’t buy quality food in the city anymore.”

The lack of major grocery stores has long been a quality-of-life problem in Detroit and one reason some families don’t want to live in the city. Now, however, the situation is getting worse as the last two Farmer Jack stores in the city prepare to close by Saturday. If no grocery stores buy the Farmer Jack locations from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Detroit will be left without a single national chain supermarket, much less a Wal-Mart or Meijer superstore or a Costco-style warehouse store. Analysts say no other major city in America is such a supermarket desert. And it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

Recent efforts by city officials, developers and community activists to woo a supermarket have been unsuccessful. Major grocery chains, which generally operate with thin profit margins, say doing business in Detroit is a no-win situation. High employee turnover, cost of security and loss from theft are often cited. The city’s comparably low-income rates preclude selling an abundance of high-profit, upscale items.

The situation has left regular shoppers at the Farmer Jack stores – one on East Jefferson and the other on Livernois at Seven Mile – with two choices: drive the suburbs to shop if they have transportation, or buy groceries at smaller stores near their homes. “Why should we have to go elsewhere to find a trustworthy store?” asked Joe Lanier, a longtime shopper of the Livernois Farmer Jack who owns a nearby business. “It’s ridiculous you can’t buy all the groceries you need in Detroit.”

Within its 139 square miles, Detroit has 155 grocery stores, defined as various-size food markets with meat and produce. The city also has 1,000 convenience stores – including gas stations and party stores – that sell some type of food. A 2003 University of Michigan study of Detroit supermarkets showed there were only five grocery stores in Detroit with over 20,000 square feet. The report concluded that the city could support 41 supermarkets with at least 40,000 square feet of space based on its population and spending habits. Over the years, national chains have located in Detroit, only to pull up stakes and flee. There are a multitude of reasons, according to retail analysts, with the major deterrent being the high cost of doing business in the city.

“Sometimes even the people that live in the neighborhood don’t feel safe shopping in the store,” said David J. Livingston, a supermarket expert from Wisconsin. “They’ll drive right past that Detroit store to go to a suburban store where they feel more comfortable.” While crime is a concern, Matt Allen, press secretary for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, said the issue should not be used as an excuse by the big chains to avoid Detroit. “In certain areas where the socioeconomic [profile] is probably at the lowest end of our society, there are a lot of desperate people,” Allen said. But, he added, businesses can take measures to prevent theft. “(Businesses) have added lighting, changed the heights of the counters, put the registers in certain places – security by environmental design. It all helps,” he said.

Detroit also suffers from a lack of strip malls with tenants to serve everyday needs. Large supermarket chains don’t like to open stand-alone stores, said Ken Dalto, a retail expert from Farmington Hills. “Larger supermarkets have a better chance of surviving if they are located in strip malls where people can do one-stop shopping,” Dalto said. “If you don’t have these anchor spots at strip malls, you aren’t going to get the large chain supermarkets.”

A number of the city’s major developers and economic growth officials said efforts to draw a national grocer to the city have met tepid responses. Midtown Development President Robert Slattery said he showed a plan for a 12,000-square-foot store with 65 parking spaces to specialty grocer Trader Joe’s, but the company didn’t bite. His company and Wayne State University are still working to lure a new market to Midtown.

Without chain grocers in her neighborhood, shoppers like Cheryl Coleman, who lives just blocks from the Farmer Jack on East Jefferson, will have to travel much farther for low-priced sundries. “I’m sure going to miss this store,” Coleman said. “I got everything I need here, just everything. We need a good grocery store in the city, right here on Jefferson.” She said she’ll probably end up shopping at a Kroger in Grosse Pointe. “It’s either Kroger or the little local store,” Coleman said. “And they don’t always have everything I want.”

Gordon Alexander, 52, who lives on the city’s east side, said suburbanites have it good compared to Detroiters. “There is only one store in the city I’ll pick up some stuff at, but my kids jokingly call it the ‘ghetto store’ because everything is subpar,” he said. “Some of these stores make the argument that they are catering to black clientele, so they have to make room to carry stuff like ham hocks and chitterlings, but that’s just an excuse for bad quality. “Here we are, trying to revitalize the waterfront and make this city whole again, but people who live here can’t even find something decent to eat. Where’s the justice in that?”

Small Bites

Bag it I: An estimated 100 billion plastic check-out bags are used annually in the U.S.

Bag it II: Ninety percent of businesses use plastic bags rather than paper.

The ecology of paper or plastic I: Businesses prefer plastic bags because they are less costly to transport and recycle.

The ecology of paper or plastic II: Only one percent of plastic check-out bags are recycled. The rest end up in landfills and waterways where they kill sea life, birds, and other animals.

The ecology of paper or plastic III: Plastic takes more than 1,000 years to biodegrade, which means every plastic bag ever manufactured is still around.

Paper or ?: For environmental and anti-litter reasons, municipalities are banning plastic bags. San Francisco has done so, and similar measures are being considered in Boston, Baltimore, Portland, OR, and other cities.

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