Second Harvest Column: More on the Farm Bill

By Lois Rockhill

Hoo-hah! That Farm Bill is a trip. I have discussed some of the implications in this column already. I must do so again to try to rouse both your interest and your action.

This enormous and enormously important bill will be the subject of debate and decision in Washington, D.C., in the next few weeks. Perhaps what you read here will move you to make a call or send an e-mail to your representative or senator on behalf of the people right here at home who depend on the nutrition safety net the bill insures.

To get it right, I am going to share with you an abbreviated version of a statement signed by leaders of 12 national anti-hunger organizations. We at Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana support these views. To read the letter word for word, enter National Anti-Hunger Organization’s Statement into your Web browser and click on the link. Here goes:

The Farm Bill has a breadth and reach far beyond American agricultural policy. The Farm Bill also will reauthorize a number of nutrition assistance programs crucial to the health and well-being of some of America’s most vulnerable people. The National Anti-Hunger Organizations represents member organizations in every state and congressional district in the country numbering in the thousands. We are united in the effort to ensure that the Farm Bill reauthorization provides adequate resources and program policy changes that are necessary to reduce the still-serious problem of hunger in our country.

We are deeply concerned about the many people in our communities who, for lack of resources, are not consistently able to put food on their tables for themselves or their families. More than 35 million people in the United States live in households that face a constant struggle against hunger.

Our top priority in the 2007 Farm Bill reauthorization is a strong Nutrition Title that reauthorizes and improves the Food Stamp Program, the nation’s first defense against hunger, and bolsters the efforts of the emergency food assistance system.

The Food Stamp Program is a crucial and effective program that has nearly eliminated malnutrition from the national landscape and helps prevent the problem of hunger from becoming worse in our communities. Food Stamp Program participation closely tracks economic trends, responding quickly to increases in need, whether due to local or national economic circumstances or to disasters, as seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Food stamps help strengthen families and the American communities where those families reside — rural, urban and suburban. More than 80 percent of food stamp benefits go to families with children, allowing their parents to obtain food at grocery stores for meals at home. Much of the remainder goes to seniors and persons with disabilities.

Through the nationwide use of Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, program utilization has been streamlined for transactions for consumers and store clerks, and EBT has quantifiably reduced the chances of program abuse. Food Stamps pay dividends for consumers, food producers and manufacturers, grocery retailers and communities. As food stamp purchases flow through grocery checkout lines, farmers’ markets and other outlets, those benefits generate almost double their value in economic activity, especially for many hard-pressed rural and urban communities desperately in need of stimulus to business and jobs.

The Food Stamp Program’s basic entitlement structure must be maintained while greater resources are provided to the program to more effectively fight hunger in our communities.

The first step to reducing hunger in the U.S. is to ensure that everyone in the Food Stamp Program has the resources to assist them in purchasing and preparing a nutritionally adequate diet. Neither the average food stamp benefit level of $1 per person per meal, nor the $10 monthly minimum benefit is sufficient to help families purchase an adequate diet.

Too many people in our communities are in need of food stamps but cannot get them. Only 33 percent of the people served by food banks nationwide are enrolled in food stamps. Those people include working poor families with savings slightly above decades old and outdated resource limits, many legal immigrants, and numerous indigent jobless people seeking employment.

In addition to the necessary improvements to the Food Stamp Program, the 2007 Farm Bill also will provide Congress with an opportunity to assist the frontline agencies that deal with the problem of hunger every day.

The nation’s food banks, food pantries, and soup kitchens are stretched to serve more and more people whose food stamps have run out mid-month or whose income and resources put them just above the food stamp eligibility threshold. Currently, more than 25 million unduplicated people are accessing emergency food annually through food banks.

Requests for emergency food assistance are outstripping the resources provided through The Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. In TEFAP alone, surplus commodity deliveries have declined more than 50 percent in the past year, at the same time that requests for emergency food have increased.

Therefore, please urge your representatives to craft a 2007 Farm Bill and FY 2008 Budget to invest significant new resources to make food stamp benefit allotments sufficient to real world needs, to open eligibility to more vulnerable populations, to connect more eligible people with benefits, and to adequately support emergency feeding programs. To do that type “how to contact your congress person” into your Web browser and follow the link or go to http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ .

 

Lois Rockhill is executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. She can be reached at lrockhill@curehunger.org

Technorati Tags: Anderson Community Groups Delaware County Environment Indiana Farm Bill Lois Rockhill Madison County Muncie Opinion Second Harvest Second Harvest Food Bank Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana

• ‹ previous
• 2410 of 3858
• next ›