Food Program Policy Initiatives in an Era of Farm Surpluses

Most of the food assistance programs carry the dual objectives of providing nutritional support to recipients and making use of abundant agricultural surpluses.1 Even so, the food programs at this time are operated largely independent of farm supply and demand problems. By and large, the food programs are viewed more in the context of income supplements that by historical accident are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That view appears to be held both within and outside of USDA. This perspective puts policy makers at a disadvantage in reconsidering any food programs from the standpoint of their agricultural impacts. The programs have their own constituencies and lives. There are at least three major and quite distinct food program constituencies and several smaller independent groups. The major ones are (a) welfare recipients and advocates, (b) school food service administrators, and (c) the health departments of the nation. These three groups have little in common, except that they all feed at the same trough. None of them recognize or are interested in the fact that the other two groups are providing benefits to many of their own clients; eligibility and benefit levels are all independently determined. None of them are interested in the agricultural impacts of their programs. There is some overlap of oversight responsibilities in the U.S. Congress, but even there (at least in the House of Representatives), there is a major dichotomy of interests. Independence of the food stamp and child nutrition programs is due in part to their automatic, annual escalators, both on eligibility and benefit levels, which are adjusted over time in line with price changes. The WIC program is more of a flat, block grant program which must be consciously increased by the Congress. Even so, most of these programs (the National School Lunch Program being an exception) must be reauthorized periodically, and usually this occurs at the time of quadrennial farm program extensions. Thus, 1985 is the appropriate time for any major changes that the Congress wants to make. Partly because of the above-mentioned characteristics and partly because of the current tenor of hunger politics in Washington, there likely will not be any significant changes made in the major food assistance programs in 1985. There will likely be some tinkering with the Food Stamp Program (FSP) but perhaps no changes at all in the child nutrition programs despite the current administration's aversion to these programs. There will again be proposals to trim the programs, but there appears to be a stalemate on the political scene. The hunger groups may in fact be able to exact another pound of flesh before they agree to the 1985 farm bill, because that bill probably will need all the friends that agriculture can muster. The Reagan administration made some important cuts in 1981, particularly in the case of the child nutrition programs; but in 1983 and 1984 they were not successful in cutting the programs further even though they proposed several cuts initially (Hiemstra). This statement does not preclude cost savings in 1985 made as a result of a general freeze on program escalators to reduce the deficit.