The 2007 Farm Bill: Making the Case

Berry Friesen, PA Hunger Action Center

How often does your daily work at your ordinary job become the focus of national attention in Washington?

“Never!” you may be muttering to yourself. Yet this far-fetched scenario is happening right now for nutrition educators. Encouraging people to eat more fruits and vegetables, one of the oh-so-familiar parts of the Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Tracks work plan, has hit the big time. “Everyone in Congress is talking about fruits and vegetables,” said a Washington lobbyist during a recent discussion of the Farm Bill. “They are worried about the medical cost of the way America eats.”

For proof, simply consider the legislation that has been introduced in Congress in an effort to influence the next Farm Bill. The most popular bill (H.R. 1551), authored by Congressman Ron Kind of Wisconsin, is called the Healthy Farms, Food and Fuels Act of 2007. It has well over 100 co-sponsors, including Pennsylvania members Brady, Doyle, English, Gerlach, Patrick Murphy, Tim Murphy, Platts, Sestak, and Schwartz. The bill would nearly quadruple funding for the WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, quadruple funding for the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, and raise funding for the school-based Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program by more than 3,000 percent! And that’s not all. It would also increase USDA fruit and vegetable purchases for schools and The Emergency Food Assistance Program and would spend $25 million a year to promote farmers’ markets.

The second most popular bill (H. R. 1600), authored by Congressman DennisCardoza from California, is called the EAT Healthy America Act. It has nearly 100 co-sponsors (including Platts from Pennsylvania) and includes many of the same provisions as the Kind bill.

Together, half of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives are on record saying they are prepared to spend a lot of new money on fruits and vegetables.

In the Senate, bills introduced by Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey (S. 919) and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio (S. 1432), include most of the fruit and vegetable provisions that have been proposed in the House. Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow has introduced S. 1160, the Specialty Crops Competition Act of 2007, which has eighteen co-sponsors, including Senator Bob Casey. It sets more modest spending targets but emphasizes the same goals.

So does that mean fruits and vegetables will get a big boost in the next Farm Bill? Probably, although finding the money to fund this expansion will be a problem. The committees working on the new Farm Bill will be creating what is called “a baseline bill,” which means aggregate spending cannot exceed last year’s spending. Thus, the proposed increases in spending for fruits and vegetables will need to be carved out of an existing program.

And that’s the rub . Every bill summarized above positions its fruit and vegetable proposals within the Nutrition Title of the Farm Bill. So the spending offsets to fund these new initiatives would likely occur by cutting what currently accounts for more than 98 percent of nutrition title funding: the Food Stamp Program. That would be an awful result.

Can Congress find a better way? Yes, by recognizing two important issues. First, it can recognize that much of the proposed new spending on fruits and vegetables (such as the school-based Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program) is not designed to benefit low-income families and would directly benefit fruit and vegetable growers. It is, in short, a commodity subsidy and should be funded by the commodity title, not by the nutrition title.

Second, Congress can recognize that by far the most effective way to encourage more fruit and vegetable consumption among low-income children and adults is the Food Stamp Program. That program, after all, reaches at-risk children and adults in every community of our nation. Thus, if Congress is serious about encouraging a shift in the eating practices of low-income families, it will build a significant share of the new spending for fruits and vegetables into the Food Stamp Program. Households that buy fruits and vegetables with their EBT cards could receive bonus payments, either as a credit on their card or in a voucher that would be redeemed for additional purchases of fruits and vegetables. The USDA recently highlighted such an approach in its publication, Amber Waves, and California is implementing the concept through state legislation.

This is the approach Pennsylvania anti-hunger groups have recommended in A Pennsylvania Proposal to Fight Hunger and Promote Health in the 2007 Farm Bill. To add buying power to the Thrifty Food Plan, and to enable more food stamp households to buy nutrient-rich foods, they have asked Congress to authorize $100 million annually for a nationwide pilot to fund incentive payments to shoppers who buy fruits and vegetables with their EBT cards.

This is a critical time in the formation of national food policy. The work nutrition educators do every day is front-and-center in the national debate. To add your voice, go to www.pahunger.org and use the e-FAX feature on the home page.