The politics of providing nutrition assistance to low-income people, at home and abroad, have come into sharp focus this year. Rising food prices are straining domestic food aid budgets, even as demand for assistance surges because of higher unemployment. Programs that provide assistance in the form of food (versus cash) are coming up short. Prices have rationed away the "surplus" food and charity itself, for practical purposes.

The debate simmers on over reform of America's international food aid. Ought we shift some or all of it to cash, instead of delivering surplus commodities, expensively, on US merchant ships? Efficacy, efficiency--and morality--would seem to demand reform. But what good is reform if assistance declines, or disappears altogether, once it no longer satisfies the needs of America's farm and maritime interests? The political pragmatism that long gave that argument its heft has acquired the patina of cynicism these past 18 months, as more and more aid groups and professionals, and governments, have come down on the side of buying more local food from local farmers in recipient countries.

This week brought two fresh examples of the political struggle over food and nutrition assistance. My friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--the most authoritative voice in the country on federal nutrition assistance policy--issued a report describing how budget pressures, colliding with rising food prices, may squeeze hundreds of thousands of low-income women and their babies out of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). This program. . .

. . .provides nutritious foods, counseling on healthy eating, and health care referrals to low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children under age five who are at nutritional risk.

WIC is not an entitlement program. With an entitlement, however many qualified people come forth to participate, usually that's how many will receive the relevant benefits, no matter the government cost (Food Stamps and federal crop and dairy subsidy programs are entitlements). With WIC, congress appropriates a fixed amount of money, and if more people apply, or the cost of the benefits increases--or both--then more people who qualify for help are turned away.

CBPP's Neuberger and Greenstein explain:

For two years in a row [FY 2006 & 2007] the per-participant cost of WIC foods had actually declined. Since the budget was developed, however, dairy prices have soared, and they are expected to remain elevated in fiscal year 2008. Milk and cheese account for about 40 percent of WIC food expenditures. Prices have also risen to high levels for juice and eggs, which account for another 25 percent of WIC food costs. As a result of higher food prices, it will cost significantly more than the Administration had anticipated to serve each WIC participant in fiscal year 2008.

Based on current food prices (and the latest estimates of food prices for the rest of fiscal year 2008), the funding level provided in the President’s budget would serve an average monthly caseload of only 7.97 million participants, significantly fewer than the Administration intended. Moreover, participation has risen somewhat in recent months as WIC food prices have spiked, making it more difficult for low-income families to afford these foods without assistance, and as unemployment has started to climb. The program served 8.48 million participants in the final quarter of fiscal year 2007, the most recent period for which data are available. Thus, the number of women, infants, and children that the program serves is 510,000 above the number who could be served under the funding level in the President’s budget.

The problem is there isn't enough money in either the House or Senate versions of the agriculture appropriations bill that provides funding for WIC for the 2008 fiscal year. On top of that, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill as too costly. If, as is being discussed, congress and the president "split the difference" on domestic discretionary spending by cutting $11 billion, the CBPP reasons the result will be even worse:

. . . WIC would be funded at a level between $5.496 billion (if the difference were split with the House bill) and $5.554 billion (if the difference were split with the Senate bill). These funding levels would require the WIC caseload to be cut by 295,000 women, infants, and children from its current level (if the difference were split with the Senate bill) and by 405,000 participants below the current level (if the difference were split with the House bill).

Another food cost/budget squeeze is hitting food banks nationwide. From the front page of this morning's New York Times:

Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close. . .

. . .The food bank in Manchester [New Hampshire] delivers provisions to a housing project each week, and on a recent Monday, Matthew Whooley, 26, of Manchester, was waiting in line with his wife, Penny, and their four children.

“Every week there’s less and less food,” Mr. Whooley said. “It used to be potatoes, meat and bread, and last week we got Doritos and flour. The food is getting shorter, and the lines keep getting longer.”

In part, food banks are suffering because farmers are doing well. The food banks rely on supplies from the federal Agriculture Department’s Bonus Commodity Program, which buys surplus crops like apples and potatoes from farmers.

“Right now, the agricultural economy is very strong and the surpluses aren’t available for us to purchase,” said Jean Daniel, a department spokeswoman. “Certainly we’re empathetic, but unfortunately we cannot count on those bonus commodities every year.”

Supplies from the surplus program dropped to $67 million worth last year, from $154.3 million in 2005 and $233 million in 2004. Figures for this year are not available, Ms. Daniel said.

Food bank operators are lobbying for passage of a farm bill currently stalled in the Senate that would raise emergency aid for food banks to $250 million a year, from $140 million. That figure has remained steady since 2002.

Susannah Morgan, executive director of the Food Bank of Alaska said, “The biggest problem is that the federal government’s programs are dropping as need is growing.”

To these examples we can add the nutritional dysfunction of the school lunch program, which would cost billions to fix if we determined to serve the same numbers of kids healthier meals. Then there's the struggle to improve the meager benefits provided to low-income families under the Food Stamp program, which now serves 26 million people per month, half of them children. (About one child in every five in America is a food stamp beneficiary.)

What connects these problems is the demoralizing lack of political will to do the right things in food and nutrition policy, and to spend the money needed to do them. It's a lot more than we're spending now. Mark Winne said it well, and provocatively, in an op-ed right before Thanksgiving in the Washington Post.

The good souls who staff America's tens of thousands of emergency food sites will renew their pleas to donors fatigued by their burst of holiday philanthropy. Food stamp workers will return to their desks and try to convince mothers that they can feed their families on the $3 per person per day that the government allots them. The cycle of need -- always present, rarely sated, never resolved -- will continue.

Unless we rethink our devotion to food donation.

America's far-flung network of emergency food programs -- from Second Harvest to tens of thousands of neighborhood food pantries -- constitutes one of the largest charitable institutions in the nation. Its vast base of volunteers and donors and its ever-expanding distribution infrastructure have made it a powerful force in shaping popular perceptions of domestic hunger and other forms of need. But in the end, one of its most lasting effects has been to sidetrack efforts to eradicate hunger and its root cause, poverty.

As sociologist Janet Poppendieck made clear in her book "Sweet Charity," there is something in the food-banking culture and its relationship with donors that dampens the desire to empower the poor and take a more muscular, public stand against hunger.

As the dilemma of the WIC program and the crisis in the food banks illustrated this week, we need to rethink even more than our devotion to food donation. We need to rethink, and reinvigorate, our devotion to food, nutrition and anti-poverty policy as a whole.

It won't be easy, and it won't be cheap.

There's a lot going on here at EWG headquarters. Since you're such a loyal reader, you've already subscribed to the Mulch feed (haven't you?), but now we've got another way for you to stay up-to-date on EWG's agriculture and conservation work. Friends, meet the Ag Policy Feed.

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So it's imperative that they be in Washington, and not on the campaign trail, when the Senate votes on Dorgan-Grassley and other subsidy reforms.

Chuck Abbott at Reuters reports (sorry, I can't find it on the Web):

The five senators running for president agree on one reform for the U.S. farm program -- a "hard" cap of $250,000 per farm per year on crop subsidies, a sharp drop from the current $360,000 limit. Proponents say they expect to win a vote on the $250,000 limit, which could come as early as next week. It was the first amendment filed when the five-year farm bill was brought to the floor in early November. In campaign statements and Senate records, the five White House hopefuls -- four Democrats and one Republican -- support the $250,000 limit. The proposal also would close loopholes that allow large operators to evade the current limit of $360,000, set in 2002. Three of the candidates are sponsors of the "hard" cap, Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican John McCain of Arizona. Democrats Joe Biden of Delaware and Hillary Clinton of New York also support the limit. The issue could be decided in the last few weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses in Iowa, the No. 1 corn and soybean state. The neighbor gatherings are the first of the state-by-state contests to determine the Republican and Democratic nominees for the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Jack Thurston, our colleague at www.farmsubsidy.org, has confronted the ugly face of U.S. cotton subsidies, right in the heart of London. And he's not taking it lightly.

Or sensually.*

*No cotton-harvest-with-bushel-basket maidens were harmed in the making of this ad.

It's well known that a gallon of gas with ethanol won't take your car or truck as far down the road as a gallon of regular gas, even if it does so with lower greenhouse gas emissions. The real question is how consumers will react--even in Iowa--if Congress (or states) rush ahead with plans to put much, much more ethanol in our tanks, much sooner, at the same time we're all desperate to get more miles per gallon.

E85, flex-fuel vehicles continue to be pushed by Ford and other companies, in a bid to make the type of fuel, instead of fuel economy, the consumer culture's indicator of greenness. Take a gander at this fine example of a green, flex-fuel Ford vehicle. Why, it's all about the E85, in a truck design cued off a locomotive.

"The F-250 Super Chief’s bold, American design, first-class comfort and exceptional traveling range were inspired by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway’s Super Chief locomotive."

The corn lobby is delighted with this approach, naturally. House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson underscored again yesterday what we've known all year: the energy bill with a gigantic increase in the renewable fuel standard (read "boatloads more corn ethanol") is more important to much of the crop subsidy lobby right now than the farm bill.

If consumers reject this proposition on pocketbook grounds, however, the bait and switch will quickly acquire the appeal of. . . leftover bait.

This chart from the EPA's web site, fueleconomy.gov, presents some eye-popping reductions in fuel economy for the handful of "flex fuel" E85 vehicles now on the road in America if they in fact fill up with 85 percent ethanol. (Flex-fuel vehicles have engines capable of running on either regular gas or up to 85 percent ethanol, or E85. Most vehicles of recent vintage can only use the standard mix of 90 percent gasoline/10 percent ethanol.)

It looks to be about a 25-30 percent MPG reduction for most vehicles, and that's an additional drop from the newly lowered, somewhat more realistic MPG estimates that EPA required on new cars and trucks starting with the 2008 model year now in showrooms. So we're talking lousy fuel economy with full E85 ethanol in American vehicles now on the market.

For instance, a Chrysler Town and Country minivan, 2WD with 6 cyl automatic, running on gasoline, will average 18 MPG (highway/city combined ) but only 13 MPG on E85. Assuming $3.01/gal for regular and $2.63/gal for E85, EPA says a 25-mile trip in the Town and Country would cost $4.18 on gas and $5.06 on E85. Annual cost, even at the much lower per gallon price for E85: $2,510 for gas, $3,034 for E85, a $524 difference (maybe a couple of monthly payments).

For the Ford Explorer (2WD, 6 cyl, auto), the combined MPG drops from 15 to 11 MPG with a switch from gas to E85. In a Taurus Wagon, it plunges to 14 from 20.

Typical drivers would probably choose to buy regular gas from time to time, especially since E85 isn't widely available (though state and federal subsidies are also being sought for retail infrastructure). So the MPG gaps would not be that great. But then, neither would the greenhouse gas reductions.

And greenhouse gas reductions are the good news with E85. Even with the lower MPG, the greenhouse gas emissions for that Town and Country would be in the range of 8.5 tons per year with E85, vs. 10.2 tons with gasoline, a 17 percent reduction. (EPA calls these "full fuel-cycle estimates"of greenhouse gas emissions, which "consider all steps in the use of a fuel, from production and refining to distribution and final use. This gives a more complete picture of how using a particular fuel contributes to climate change.")

Most consumers probably want greenhouse gas reductions. But they definitely want more miles per gallon, and therefore less of their money left at the gas station. Even if we do start calling it the "fueling station."

On the other hand, one could see the E85 push as another step in Detroit's brilliant "buy foreign" campaign. Now in full swing, its apparent goal is to get Americans into smaller, better made, more fuel-efficient foreign cars, while closing costly domestic auto plants and laying off expensive U.S. autoworkers.

I guess for U.S. automakers, almost anything beats a headlong rush towards great cars that get great mileage. And sell.

Renegade School Lunch Lady, Chef Ann Cooper, who runs the school lunch program for Berkeley's public schools, is the lede in Sunday's farm bill story by Nicole Gaouette in the LA Times:

When Ann Cooper took over the lunch program for Berkeley schools, she found children eating chicken nuggets and Tater Tots. (”Pre-flash fried with corn fillers and corn coating,” she tut-tutted.) There was also canned fruit cocktail and chocolate milk. (”Both with high-fructose corn syrup.”)
Lunches averaged 800 to 900 calories — much higher than federal guidelines — and were loaded with salt. “That is just crazy in a world of obesity,” Cooper said.

"Farm bills always favor the status quo when they’re rushed,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. “This gives us some time to educate people.”

Including improvements added to the bill by a manager’s amendment after the bill passed out of Committee, the nutrition provisions of the bill include about $4.3 billion over five years in improvements for the Food Stamp Program and the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), $1.1 billion for an expanded program under the School Lunch Program to provide free fresh fruits and vegetables in schools, as well as various provisions that reauthorize and improve the Food Stamp Program and various commodity distribution and other nutrition programs.

Under the Senate Agriculture Committee bill, all of the food stamp improvements listed below, with one small exception that is noted, would expire after five years. This unprecedented approach to food stamp legislation appears to result from the bill not including sufficient budgetary offsets to make these improvements permanent. Unless Congress later took action to extend the proposed policies, more than 10 million recipients would experience benefit cuts and over 100,000 low-income people would be cut off food stamps in 2013.

Today's editorial makes a point we've made here before: those of us advocating for caps on subsidy payments and tighter means testing for subsidy recipients need to remember just how nutty the "limits" being discussed sound to ordinary people.
Or as the Post puts it this morning in reference to the pending Dorgan-Grassley payment limit amendment and Amy Klobuchar's proposal for an adjusted gross income lid:

Note that even if both of these amendments pass, a farm family making $749,999 a year could still receive a $249,999 handout from the taxpayers. For a Democratic Congress eager to restore a modicum of balance to the distribution of income in America, this should be a very easy call.