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.