Brasher: Food stamps, food banks ravaged by steeper prices

from the Des Moines Register

BY PHILIP BRASHER
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU

Washington, D.C. - The high prices for milk, grain and other commodities are hitting home at places like the Johnson County Crisis Center food bank in Iowa City.

More people are struggling to buy food, even with food stamps. But at the same time, donors have cut back on contributions.

The annual Boy Scout-led food drive brought in eight pallets of food last fall, four fewer than normal.

"A lot of the staple items - bread, dairy products in particular - have had a sharp increase (in price)," said Dayna Ballantyne, the food bank's director. "Across the board, our clients are finding they just aren't able to purchase food like they used to."

The cost of feeding a family of four on a low-income budget has jumped nearly 6 percent since February 2007, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Anti-hunger advocates say the increase in food prices makes it all the more important for Congress to agree on a new farm bill soon and to include increases in nutrition spending, both to raise food stamp benefits and to provide more commodities to food pantries and soup kitchens.

Extending the old farm bill, as some lawmakers have talked about, just won't do, said Ellen Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based advocacy group.

"We're just going to see the purchasing power for food stamps continuing to erode, and it doesn't do anything to get commodities up on the shelves in the food banks," she said.

The Johnson County Crisis Center has been providing food to 970 families a week recently, up from the typical 750, as families struggle to pay their food and energy bills. But the food bank, strapped for donations, is giving recipients one-third less food than it used to.

The amount of food stamp benefits a family is allowed goes up each fall based on inflation. But that increase is based on an estimate of food costs the previous June, and since last June, food costs have risen 5.2 percent, according to USDA.

"For our clients that do receive food stamps, the amount of food stamps allocated per household hasn't gone up with the food costs. The food stamps they receive haven't gone as far as they used to," Ballantyne said.

The House and Senate have passed separate versions of a new farm bill that would increase food stamp benefits and make it easier for some low-income families to qualify for the program:

- The minimum monthly benefit for a one- or two-person household has been fixed at $10 since the 1970s. It would be raised immediately under both bills and increase in following years based on inflation.

- Benefits also would go up for other families because of new rules that would, for example, remove limits on how much they pay for child care.

- A cap on how much money families can have in savings would be raised by both bills and indexed to inflation. Under current rules, most families can have no more than $2,000 in the bank and qualify for food stamps. In some cases the cap includes retirement savings and college funds.

Both the Senate and House versions of the farm bill also would expand a commodity-distribution program that food banks depend on for commodities they provide to food pantries and soup kitchens.

Funding for the program, now set at $140 million a year, would be raised to $250 million and indexed to inflation under the House bill to account for rising food costs.

The Senate bill would fix the program's funding at $240 million annually.

Whether Congress can pass a farm bill at all this year remains to be seen. The chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees tentatively agreed recently to a framework for a compromise bill that would increase nutrition spending by $9.5 billion over 10 years.

However, lawmakers have been at a stalemate on other issues, most notably over what committees would control a new agricultural disaster assistance program.

Existing farm programs are set to expire April 18. If lawmakers can't finish a new farm bill by then, they could decide to put the legislation off until 2009 or later, a prospect that concerns nutrition groups.

"There really isn't any good alternative other than passing" a new farm bill, said Karen Ford, executive director of the Food Bank of Iowa.

Reporter Philip Brasher can be reached at (202) 906-8138 or pbrasher@dmreg.com