Foodlinks America - November 9, 2007
Foodlinks America - November 9, 2007
In this issue:
• Farm Bill Heads to Senate Floor with Enhanced Nutrition Title
• Appropriations Delayed Until December
• Community Food Project Grants Announced
• Poll Finds Americans Believe Hunger Is Worsening
• New Funding Scheme Announced for Indian Commodities
• 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.
Farm Bill Heads to Senate Floor with Enhanced Nutrition Title
An additional $1 billion has been added in the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version of the 2007 Farm Bill for expanding nutrition assistance programs. The legislation is currently being discussed on the floor of the Senate. Under an agreement between Committee chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) cost savings from the Average Cost Revenue program will bolster food stamps and emergency food assistance.
Beyond other food stamp revisions already in the bill, the revenues available from the Roberts amendment will raise the allowable level of assets from $2,000 to $3,500 for most households and from $3,000 to $4,500 for households with elderly or disabled members. The minimum benefit level of $10 will also be raised, climbing to an estimated $18 by 2012. In addition, the amendment will support an increase in mandatory food purchase funds for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) to $250 million a year.
“This savings allows us to deliver by greatly improving the ability of low-income Americans to obtain help before hitting rock bottom, increasing the minimum food stamp benefit, which is especially important to seniors, and also increasing help to our nation’s food banks,†said Senator Harkin. The Senate Agriculture Committee’s bill would devote $4.2 billion in new spending on food programs, a total close to the House’s figure in its Farm Bill passed in July, though the House set somewhat different priorities.
As this issue of Foodlinks America was being finalized, the Farm Bill was awaiting consideration on the Senate floor, but being delayed by other legislation and procedural issues about what type of amendments could be debated. Another, potentially bigger delay was revealed on November 6, 2007, when the Bush Administration announced it would veto the current Senate version of the Farm Bill for its lack of reform on crop subsidies and a complaint that taxes are being raised to finance nutrition improvements. The President said back in July that he would veto the House Farm Bill, which passed on a 231-191 margin, well short of the number needed to override a veto.
Harkin, nonetheless, is ready to move ahead in spite of opposition from the White House and some Congressional Republicans. “It is disappointing that the Administration is already threatening a veto of this bill while the Senate is still considering this measure,†he noted. “The Administration takes issue with virtually every part of this bill – even the distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables to school children. With the Administration’s misguided veto threat looming over this bill, we cannot waste one more day – one more minute – debating procedure,†said Harkin.
Once the bill does begin moving, in spite of its shortcomings, it could easily muster majority support. Iowa’s Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, said on November 6, 2007 that he thought the Farm Bill will pass by a veto-proof margin with significant bi-partisan support. Nonetheless, passing a bill in the Senate and reconciling different House-Senate versions are challenging goals that could carry beyond the end of the year.
Appropriations Delayed Until December
With Congress challenged to reach compromise on fiscal year 2008 spending bills and the Administration threatening vetoes of most of them, movement on appropriations bills for next year has ground to a halt. The current continuing resolution (CR), maintaining most programs at fiscal year 2007 levels, is in effect until November 17. A new CR is being prepared in the House to carry through December 14, 2007. It now appears increasingly likely that final appropriations decisions for 2008 may be delayed until after the New Year.
Community Food Project Grants Announced
Efforts to build improved food systems in low-income communities got a $4.8 million boost recently, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the distribution of fiscal year 2007 grants to 34 non-profit organizations in 20 states under the Community Food Projects (CFP) program. A total of 18 regular CFP grants, ranging from $48,000 to $300,000, were made; 11 organizations received smaller planning project grants of up to $25,000; and five groups were funded for regional or national training and technical assistance activities.
The CFP program has been meeting the food needs of low-income people for the past 11 years by increasing the self-reliance of communities in providing for their own food, farm, and nutrition issues and needs. Examples of projects that received fiscal year 2007 funding will:
- Provide entrepreneurial training to Somali refugees in a rural Wisconsin community to help them start food-related businesses;
- Increase the amount of locally-produced fresh food being used in school meal programs in Buffalo, NY;
- Pilot moveable farmers’ markets to increase access to healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods in New Orleans, LA still recovering from Hurricane Katrina;
- Establish a community supported agriculture (CSA) program on a decommissioned naval base in California;
- Conduct a comprehensive needs assessment of food and agriculture concerns in a rural county in Wyoming; and
- Initiate school gardens in a small town in Alaska.
For further information and a listing of grantees,
go to: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB/….navid=NEWS_RELEASE#7_2_5JM.
Poll Finds Americans Believe Hunger Is Worsening
Nearly two in three (64 percent) Americans think the hunger problem in the U.S. is worse than it was last year, with rapidly increasing food and fuel costs the main culprits, according to the Hormel Hunger Survey 2007: A National Perspective, conducted by Hormel Foods Corporation with the assistance of America’s Second Harvest, the national food bank network.
Survey participants blamed the growing hunger problem on poor economic conditions, with two-thirds of them saying they have had to cut back on food purchases due to higher prices. These consumers are also aware of the effects of diverting an increasing percentage of America’s corn crop to fuel. Sixty percent of survey participants agreed that ethanol use is increasing the cost of corn, and hence, food prices for items made with corn products or corn sweeteners.
The survey also found hunger hits close to home. Thirteen percent of respondents had first-hand experience with hunger, saying either they or an immediate family member had gone hungry in the past month due to an inability of the family to pay for food. And one in five said they personally or someone in their family had received help from a food bank, pantry, or meal program within the past year.
Hormel’s study was released at a statewide hunger summit in Ohio on October 29, 2007. “This research has helped us identify the issues of most concern to residents of Ohio and our local partners,†said Jeffrey Ettinger, Hormel’s president. “We hope that these findings along with the summit we conducted today will fuel further work toward a collaborative solution to end hunger in Ohio and across America.†For more survey results, go to: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071029/20071029005575.html?.v=1.
New Funding Scheme Announced for Indian Commodities
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to implement a new funding plan for the allocation of administrative funds in the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) beginning in fiscal year 2008. The FDPIR provides commodities to nearly 100,000 low-income Indians and Native Americans through 110 programs scattered across the nation.
The changes reflect USDA’s adaptation of one of three proposals offered last month by the FDPIR Funding Work Group, which took two years to come up with fair and equitable ways to divide the approximately $27 million in annual administrative funding. USDA will allocate funds to its regions, with 65 percent of funding based on each region’s share of national FDPIR participation and 35 percent on each region’s share of the national number of FDPIR programs. Each Indian Tribal Organization (ITO) or state will then negotiate with the regional office on an annual budget.
For more details, see: http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/programs/fdpir/FundingWkGrp/FinalDecisonLetter10-31-07web.pdf.
Obesity Round-Up
Not as bad as we thought?: A new federal study has found that being overweight increases the likelihood of dying from diabetes or kidney disease, but not cancer or heart disease. The seemingly counterintuitive findings were drawn from a thorough analysis of years of government records for a sample of more than 39,000 Americans.
“The take-home message is that the relationship between fat and mortality is more complicated than we tend to think,†stated Katherine Flegal and lead researcher for the study by the federal Centers for Disease Control. “It’s not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all situation, where excess weight increases your mortality risk for any and all causes of death,†she added.
Others disagreed. “It’s just rubbish,†said Walter Willett, a nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It’s just ludicrous to say there is no increased risk of mortality from being overweight … From a health standpoint, it’s definitely undesirable to be overweight.â€
The study was reviewed in the November 7, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association at: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/17/2028?maxtoshow=…=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
Fat and cancer linked: Research results showing that excess body fat increases the risk of developing cancer are stronger than ever, claimed the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) in an October 31, 2007 report. Evidence showing that alcohol consumption and the consumption of red meat and processed meat products also increase risk of cancer was deemed “convincing.â€
The huge, landmark study, “Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, was a five-year effort involving nine, independent scientific teams, hundreds of peer reviewers, and an analysis of over 7,000 large-scale studies, focused on cancer prevention. Six cancers were linked to body fat: cancer of the colon, kidney, pancreas, esophagus, endometrium, and post-menopausal breast cancer.
“The most striking finding is that excess body fat increases risk for numerous cancers. That is why body weight is the focus of our first recommendation,†said Dr. W. Phillip James who was involved with the study. Two other key recommendations call for limiting intake of “energy dense†foods (such as burgers. Fries, milk shakes, pastries, and sugary drinks) and exercising at least 30 minutes daily.
Compared to 10 years ago, the report found more evidence red meat and processed meat (bacon, ham, sausage, and lunchmeat) consumption increased cancer risks. So did alcoholic drinks of any kind. To learn more details, visit: http://www.aicr.org/site/News2?abbr=pr_&page=NewsArticle&id=12898&news_iv_ctrl=1102.
Sleeping the pounds away: A good night’s sleep will help children keep the pounds off, according to a University of Michigan study, published in the November 2007 issue of Pediatrics. Shorter sleep duration was associated with increased risk of being overweight at ages nine to twelve, and researchers found that every additional hour of sleep per night a third-grader got, the chance of being obese in sixth grade was reduced 40 percent. But parents will need to be proactive in getting their children to bed. Third–graders did best when they got nine hours and 45 minutes of sleep a night.
Read more at: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/short/120/5/1020.
Reports from the Field
Newspaper accounts claim that the economy in Wichita, Kansas is “thriving.†But low wages for most workers means that the emergency food business is also thriving, with lines for food aid getting longer, as this October 21, 2007 article from the Wichita Eagle describes:
Food charities say they are seeing ominous numbers of hungry people this year. One culprit, they say, is the price of milk. So many poor people tried to get into the Lord’s Diner line on Wednesday that when a rainstorm struck, eight people were left soaking outside, one of them an elderly woman on a motorized scooter. She sat stoically as rainwater poured off the bill of her fishing cap. The diner’s clogged rain gutters poured double waterfalls at her feet, splashing as high as her knees.
Inside, volunteers scooped turkey, gravy and cornbread. The nearly 420 diners that night included children, elderly and disabled people, and people like Andrea Needham and Daniel Thomas, who have jobs but don’t earn enough to feed their children through a week.
About 800 to 1,000 people have been lining up outside the Bread of Life food pantry every Tuesday this fall. The pantry usually doesn’t see numbers like that until closer to Thanksgiving, said Donna Pinaire, the pantry’s director. From January through September, the pantry served 25,000 people, 3,500 more than in the same period last year. The Lord’s Diner set a new one-night record (600 people served) on Memorial Day, said executive director Wendy Glick. Catholic Charities fed 7,529 people in the first six months of this year, about 1,300 more than the same period last year.
Food charities may be in trouble this year, said Brian Walker, president of the Kansas Food Bank. “I’m seeing numbers that disturb me. I’m seeing people surviving on very little, and I don’t know how some of them do it.” Walker’s food bank acquires tons of free or nearly free food from manufacturers, then ships it to hundreds of food pantries in 86 Kansas counties. Donations have not dropped, but demand has shot up. In July, August and September this year, he handed out 500,000 pounds more food than in the same three months last year.
The culprits for this spike in numbers, say the charities and at least one economic analyst, include the price of gas, the price of milk and the price of orange juice. On Wednesday, when the charity’s marketing director, Teresa Kunze, opened freezers at the pantry on North Topeka, she found several empty shelves. “And the guy we call the Hot Dog Man (a donor) had overstocked them recently because he was going to be out of town for a few days.” And the neediest month, November, is yet to come.
Why these numbers? Aircraft companies have hired like mad. The Wichita Area Technical College and the Chamber of Commerce have pointed out for years that we have huge labor shortages in nursing, air conditioning repair and dozens of other fields as baby boomers retire. The working poor often are not trained for those skilled jobs and can’t afford the schooling or the day care.
“We can’t blame the economy,” said Janet Harrah, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University. “The local economy is going great.” But Harrah said that costs are another part of the picture. “The price of milk, price of orange juice, the cost of gasoline, we’ve got inflation with those items, and to a certain segment of the population, these are not luxury items. If the price of clothing goes up, you can wear that old dress. But if you’ve got kids, and you need to buy milk – well, you need to buy milk.”
“There are many people working hard at restaurant or service industry jobs that can’t have a family and can’t feed themselves on a wage like that,” Walker said. “Seeing milk go to nearly $4 a gallon is just a nuisance to those of us in the middle class,” he said. “But to poor people, and employed people making $10 or $12 an hour, $4 milk is the difference between eating and not eating.”
People picking up food agree. “The minimum wage is what, $5.85 an hour?” said Freddy Davis, a 48-year-old roofer receiving a bag of food at Catholic Charities. “How can you even think about making it when the price of a pack of baloney is two, three dollars apiece?” Andrea Needham, who showed up at the Lord’s Diner on Wednesday with husband, Donn, and their two kids, said the family eats there two to three nights a week out of necessity, even though she’s fully employed in tech services. The rising cost of milk and gas hit them hard, she said.
The charities say few of these hungry people are lazy and looking for handouts. About one-third of the households served by the Kansas Food Bank have at least one employed member. Nearly 63 percent are white. At least 2,700 of the people served during the last school year were children that schools across the state found were not getting much – or anything – to eat on weekends. The food bank sent backpacks home with them every Friday. This year, Walker has already identified as many hungry children as he did in all of last year, and is worried about how many more he will find. Nearly one in four families who eat at the Lord’s Diner has one person employed. Forty-four percent of the diner patrons have disabilities. Many are elderly.
Those poor who can’t work often are desperate. Angel Marie Summers, who stood in line at Catholic Charities food pantry on Wednesday, is 22 and disabled due to periodic epileptic seizures. Were it not for Catholic Charities, other pantries, and food stamps, “I don’t know how I would live.”
Small Bites
More you don’t want to choose from: A record 20,031 new food and beverage products were introduced into the American market in 2006, with the candy/gum/snacks food category posting the largest increase at 28 percent; beverages were second at 26 percent.
Not so new: Over 90 percent of the new food and beverage products introduced were not innovative, but rather variations of existing products, such as new flavors or pack sizes.
Not so fresh: Americans eat more than 22 pounds of tomatoes annually, more than half of it in the form of ketchup or tomato sauce.
But lots of variety: There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.
A ton of food: Each American eats about 1,500 pounds of food a year.
Be-tray-ed: Many pre-plated meals come in Stryofoam cafeteria trays – New York City schools alone go through four million per week. Cities and school districts across the country are looking for reusable or biodegradable alternatives to Styrofoam, a petroleum-based material that takes centuries to decompose.
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