Author: WHES

Rosenbaum is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities specializing in food stamp issues. This article first appeared on the CBPP website and may be viewed at http://www.cbpp.org/7-22-08fa.htm.

(July 23, 2008) The economic slowdown has coincided with a sharp increase in food prices, which has exacerbated hardship for many low-income families also facing high gas prices (and by the fall and winter, very high home heating bills). Unfortunately, during periods of rapid food inflation, the Food Stamp Program’s current rules do not ensure that needy families and individuals receive sufficient support to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet.

Food stamp benefits are adjusted annually for food price inflation, but the adjustment is based on lagged data that are four months old at the beginning of the fiscal year and 15 months out of date by the end of the fiscal year.

Food stamp benefits for each fiscal year are based on the cost of the “Thrifty Food Plan,” the Department of Agriculture’s lowest-cost nutritionally adequate diet plan, in June of the prior fiscal year.1

As a result, in every month of fiscal year 2008, as food prices have climbed, food stamp benefits have been inadequate to enable households to purchase the Thrifty Food Plan. By June 2008, the latest month for which USDA estimates are available, the cost of food had increased 8.5 percent since the previous June, and food stamp benefits were $46 a month below the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan for a family of four. (The maximum food stamp benefit for a family of four with no other income available for food purchases was $542 a month, while the monthly cost of the Thrifty Food Plan stood at $588.30). 2

Food stamp benefits will be adjusted on October 2008 to reflect food inflation for the June 2007 to June 2008 period. This increase will be 8.5 percent, a significant adjustment to reflect increased food costs over the June-to-June period. But when fiscal year 2009 starts this October, food stamp benefits will again already be four months out of date and will grow more out of date as the year progresses.

Even if food inflation is only half as high next year is it was this year, by Christmas food stamp benefits will fall about $10 behind the monthly cost of USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan for a family of four, and by the spring, a family of four’s benefits will fall more than $20 short. If food inflation next year equals this year’s levels, the shortfalls will be twice as large.

The food stamp improvements included in the recently enacted farm bill will help to provide some relief: about half of all food stamp recipients will receive about $1 to $5 a month in additional benefits in 2009 as a result of it. (The farm bill’s food stamp improvements become more significant over time.) But the farm bill’s improvements will not address the increased cost of food over the fiscal year if food inflation proves to be high again next year and will not help many of the poorest families who struggle the most to afford sufficient food.

Congress could address this problem for the coming fiscal year by anticipating the food price inflation that will occur and acting to offset some of it so assistance to needy families and elderly individuals does not again fall short of what is needed to purchase a minimally adequate diet. For example, for fiscal year 2009, food stamp benefits could be set at a level higher than the amount that otherwise is scheduled to take effect — that is, the benefits could be set several percentage points above June 2008 food costs so that as food prices rise over the course of the coming fiscal year, food stamp benefits will be adequate to meet them.

The approach would be consistent with the way that food stamps were regularly adjusted for food price inflation for many years prior to 1996. Until 1996, federal law set food stamp benefit levels for a given fiscal year at 103 percent of the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan in the previous June. Congress set the benefits at this level to compensate for the lag in data on food prices and thereby to try to ensure that food stamp households would have the resources to secure adequate food over the course of the year.

End Notes:

1. In calculating households’ food stamp benefit levels, program rules assume that households will pay 30 percent of their net income toward food purchases.

2. For USDA estimates of the monthly cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, see: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USDAFoodCost-Home.htm. Food stamp benefits are based on the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan for a family of four with children 6-9 and 9-11 years old. USDA makes adjustments for household size and for higher food prices in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. For food stamp maximum benefit amounts, see http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/government/cola.htm. For information on the Thrifty Food Plan itself, see U.S. Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, “Thrifty Food Plan, 2006,” April 2007, available at http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/FoodPlans/MiscPubs/TFP2006Report.pdf.

John Samuel is a social activist and the International Director of ActionAid. This article first appeared in Pambazuka News and may be viewed at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/49362

(July 15, 2008) The meeting of G8 leaders in Hokkaido, Japan, proved to be an exercise in escapism. The final communiqué of the G8 leaders is more of a recycled rhetoric of broken promises. This meeting, held in the midst of financial, fuel, food and climate crisis, failed to recognize the gravity of the crisis. The G8 leaders’ posturing of confidence will not help to solve these issues. This would further increase the legitimacy crisis of G8 as a credible forum to develop any viable solution for the ongoing problems of hunger and injustice- partly perpetuated by the corporate and institutional interests of G8 countries.

The original grouping of rich industrialized nations–G7–emerged in the context of the oil crisis of the 1970s. Now after almost thirty years, G8- that includes the co-opted Russia- face the challenge of being responsible to address the looming crisis of finance, fuel and food. The balance sheet of G8 in the last thirty years clearly shows that G8 as an institutionalized venue failed to provide any meaningful solution to the issues of poverty, war, inequities and injustice that confront the world. While they have managed to impose the neoliberal policy paradigm- with the strategic use of World Bank and IMF conditionality- on the developing world and poor nations of the world, they have not been able to do anything substantial to address trade inequities, aid diversion and debt trap. In fact, G8 leaders, instead of solving these issues, often used the Summits to push forward the interest of the rich countries, with lots of window dressing and rhetoric about poverty reduction, and more aid for the poor countries. In 2005, they promised to write off the debt and double the aid to Africa to address issues of poverty, disease and sustainable development. After three years, these leaders stand exposed in the graveyard of broken promises.

Though a new grouping of G5, countries, including India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, are being co-opted in to the periphery of the G8 Summits. The G5 Countries too have failed to influence the agenda or outcome of the G8 process. So it is high time for the G5 countries to ponder the very validity of being in the periphery of the G8 Summit- legitimizing the agenda setting role of the rich and powerful countries. Instead of playing the second fiddle to the rich American- European axis and a co-opted Japan, it is high time for G5 to explore the option of reviving the G20 process as an alternate option to discuss and to adopt collective measures to address the issues that confront humanity and the world. This requires a fresh imagination and political will from the part of the G5 leaders.

The Hokkaido summit is happening in the midst of international policy and political crisis. Though G8 leaders claim that it is the grouping of the democratic and developed nations of the world, the irony of G8 summit is that it is one of the most undemocratic of the global processes. The leaders neither discuss the key issues in their parliament nor involve citizens or civil society in deciding the agenda for the meeting. The public rating of many leaders, including George Bush and Fukuda, is at the lowest.

The fact that G8 summits are held in the far away luxury resorts, fearing citizens and peoples’ action show that they are insulated from the people and process of democratic culture. This year an estimated US$ 250 million was spent by Japan for security alone. The leaders addressed the press through video conferencing facilities rather than facing the journalists. Why should the “leaders of the world” be afraid of the people they represent? Such a situation seems to indicate their lack of democratic credentials and legitimacy to represent the peoples of their countries or to take decision on their behalf. Authority without accountability and transparency is essentially anti-democratic in its very content and form. So the G8 Summit itself failed to meet democratic standards or accountable governance.

Only three short years after G8 pledged to ‘make poverty history” at Gleneagles in 2005, spiraling food and fuel prices is creating poverty in historically large proportions. The G8 has done nothing to stop it. The ranks of the hungry have swelled in to 950 million this year and it is estimated that another 750 million are now at the risk of falling into chronic hunger.

As many as 1.7 billion people, or one of every four persons in the world, may now lack basic food security. In fact the so-called food crisis is a symptom of a deeper crisis of finance capital and speculative commodity market. Over the last twenty years, most of the marginal farmers and small agricultural producers have been slowly poisoned through systematic withdrawal of support systems and subsidies, as a part of the neo-liberal structural adjustment Programs imposed on the developing world and poor countries by the G8 force and WB /IMF.

The climate crisis was used as an opportunity to subsidize the rich farmers through Biofuel subsidies. The rising food price is driven partly due to new appetite for biofuel power to fuel their cars. The corn needed to fill up a car tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for one year. This in effect makes Biofuel the new poison that can undermine the food security of million of people and steal their food and lives. It is imperative to stop all subsidies for Biofuel, primarily by the US. It is also important to declare a moratorium on the diversion of agricultural land for biofuel monocropping. However, it is appalling to see the evasive tactic of G8 leaders on the issue of biofuel perpetuating food insecurity and crisis.

Though there has been lots of discussion about climate change, G8 leaders simply failed to walk their talk. The G8 countries’ failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is already wreaking havoc on agriculture through severe floods, droughts and rising temperatures. The carbon dioxide emissions from G8 countries make up to 40 percent of the world’s total emission. And yet only 13% of the world population lives in G8 countries. Not only are G8 countries responsible for large-scale pollution, they are also failing to compensate poor countries that are bearing the brunt of the G8 countries’ dirty emission.

Though G8 countries have promised that that will reduce emission by half by 2050, it is too far off and less of a commitment to meet the challenge of climate crisis. So the promise of 2050 is more of a stalling tactic, rather than real commitment to act. While the environmental and economic viability of nuclear power generation is increasingly questioned in their own countries, it seems the G8 is once again pedaling nuclear power generation as a response to climate crisis. When we locate this in the context of the proposed civil nuclear deal with India and the US, it is clear that many of the G8 countries are very keen to market their old nuclear reactors to emerging markets such as India.

Hence, the Hokkaido G8 summit is a more regressive step. The final communiqué thoroughly exposed the lack of policy or political imagination of the G8 leaders. The communiqué also signified their lack of political will and the deficit of moral and political legitimacy to act as the leaders of the world.

The pertinent question is whether the G8 is a part of the problem or part of the solution. The Hokkaido Summit seems to suggest that G8 is keener to remain as a part of the problem. The world requires more accountable, imaginative and multilateral processes to address the issues of injustice, poverty and environmental crisis. The answer should lie more in reforming the multilateral United Nations Process, rather than rely on the quasi-global governance posturing of the G8 leaders.

At the height of the Great Depression, industry convinced President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress to enact a law allowing companies to collude to drive up prices.

May 30, 2008

There is a great deal of concern at this time about rising food prices, shortages of food and the inability of poor people around the world to obtain the food they need for themselves and their families. These are serious problems that deserve both immediate and longer-term attention.

While the long-term solution to food shortages and high prices is improved agriculture systems in many developing countries, the immediate, urgent needs in many countries still require food aid – actual donations of food to those in need.

The United States is the world’s largest supplier of food aid, providing millions of tons of food to many countries throughout the world. The US buys food aid from its farmers and processors – it is not “surplus” food – and ships it to those countries in need, with many shipments on US vessels. These donations are valued at more than a billion dollars each year and create thousands of jobs and considerable business activity here in the US , while at the same time, helping others overseas.

But some think that it would be better for the US not to buy food from its own farmers and processors, and not use its own ports and ships and just send money to the United Nations and other groups in order for them to buy food “locally” or in the region that is in need, and thus, it is assumed, save time and money.

However, this may not be as easy as it sounds.

First, we need to remember that in a serious famine or food scarcity situation, there will already be very little food in any significant quantities that will be available “locally” – and large quantities are often what is needed. In recent years, US grain shipments to famine-stricken areas of Africa have been in the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands tons. Even “regional” purchases in Africa would not be possible in that magnitude – those large quantities are just not available for purchase there, especially in countries that need to keep their food for their own needs.

While the United Nations has been purchasing food in some African regions needing food aid, the individual quantities from those sources have been relatively small – perhaps a few thousand tons at a time, but usually not in the very large quantities that have been needed for major famine relief. Most larger UN purchases have come from outside of Africa, including Canada , Europe and South Asia, not from African farmers, and these shipments may often involve the same time and expense as shipping food aid from the US . But even these purchases are becoming more difficult, as some countries, such as Pakistan , are restricting exports. Also, these “local” and regional purchases are very costly; prices are high and expenses involve freight costs and international traders and purchasing units earning fees and commissions.

Second, there are concerns about food safety and good quality of food. Poor and hungry people deserve safe, nutritious food. When the US buys food aid in its own market and ships it overseas, it is held to very high specifications for type and quality. The food aid that is provided by the United States is as good as we eat here. Having the UN or others, buy food from “local” or regional sources overseas carries no guarantee that these types of standards will be achieved. If they are achieved, it is estimated that the cost and time involved will be the same or greater than safely shipping the food from the US . (As an example of just a small problem in this regard, a major US relief agency purchased beans locally in Africa a few years ago, only to find stones mixed in with the beans.)

Finally, there may be concerns about “local” or regional purchases causing market disruption in food insecure areas or driving up prices for those who already cannot afford to buy what they need. Allowing these purchases to cause such harmful results is a contradiction of their purpose.

Clearly, a test of this process is needed before large amounts of US agriculture funds are transferred to the UN and others for these types of purchases. Fortunately, the Congress has just passed a provision in the US Farm Bill directing the US Agency for International Development and the US Department of Agriculture to conduct such a test over the next few years. This testing process can determine whether it really is less expensive and more efficient to purchase large quantities “regionally” and still maintain all the quality and sanitation controls currently required on US shipments. Shipping costs and delivery times may not be less or faster for these purchases and there is a serious question of who would actually do such purchasing and at what cost. But until a test is completed and verified, “local” purchasing with US money should be delayed.

Daniel Shaughnessy is the former Chairman of the Board of the World Hunger Education Service. He was also the Executive Director of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger, and directed US food aid activities in the US Department of Agriculture and the US Agency for International Development

Disclaimer: The contents of this opinion editorial do not necessarily represent the views of the WHES board.

Donald Rumsfeld is today a discredited and widely reviled figure. Robert Gates, Rumsfeld’s successor as Defense secretary, is generally admired for manifesting qualities that Rumsfeld lacked — a willingness to listen not least among them.

THE DEADLINE for completion of a new farm bill has been pushed back to May 16. But the endless wrangling over a piece of legislation that Congress once hoped to finish in 2007 has not induced a significant change in the thinking of those who regard it as an opportunity to lock in lush new benefits for American agricultural producers.

(February 20, 2008) President George W. Bush is already grabbing headlines with his latest self-congratulatory album, PEPFAR: True Leadership, and his accompanying farewell promotional tour across Africa. Between February 15 and 21, he travels to the countries of Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia to promote this musical swan song – a concept piece that highlights his supposedly groundbreaking leadership in the fight against global HIV/AIDS. As with Bush’s previous productions, this latest record will frustrate music lovers with serious lyrical flaws that illustrate the ineffectiveness of the U.S. response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

In his plucky first single, My Plan, President Bush reminds listeners of how he chose in 2003 to create his own unilateral program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), rather than pledge full U.S. support to the already established and internationally acclaimed multilateral initiative known as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Bush’s catchy lyrics fail to mention how PEPFAR created a duplicative bureaucracy grounded in an emergency response mentality that challenges its sustainable effectiveness. Equally absent from the liner notes is any acknowledgement of the low levels of PEPFAR’s overall funding relative to the scope of the global HIV/AIDS crisis, of which Africa remains the epicenter.

President Bush touts his favored abstinence-until-marriage HIV prevention strategy on the album’s second single, “A.U.M”. The melody here is simply out of tune. As a result of an earmark in the PEPFAR legislation that privileges abstinence-until-marriage programs, the distribution of U.S. global HIV/AIDS funds has undermined access to life-saving condoms. African community organizations that implement PEPFAR funded prevention and treatment programs have been frustrated by this ideological limitation, which restricts them from responding to the distinct needs of their communities. Uganda, held up as an African success story because of its success in reducing HIV rates over the past decade, achieved progress through a comprehensive national prevention campaign that promoted abstinence, being faithful and condom usage (the ‘ABC’ approach). Uganda currently risks reversing this progress because of the Bush-driven shift away from education on condom use.

In the upbeat Profits Versus Lives, Bush attempts to lift the tempo as he defends his administration against claims that they prioritize corporate profits over African lives. While the chorus declares that PEPFAR uses the most cost-effective medications available to treat HIV-affected individuals, Bush’s pithy lyrics don’t stand up to the facts. In 2006, brand name manufacturers produced 73% of the lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs purchased with PEPFAR funds, totaling 20% of all PEPFAR funding that year. While PEPFAR does not explicitly forbid money from being spent on generic anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, the Bush administration refuses to accept World Health Organization (WHO) evaluations of drug purity, safety and efficacy, instead relying solely on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s screening process to choose which drugs are PEPFAR eligible. This unnecessary procedural bias means that few of the cheaper, internationally produced generic drugs can be purchased for PEPFAR treatment programs, reducing the efficiency of U.S. taxpayer dollars and placing fewer Africans on life-saving ARV-treatment.

Doubling the Dollar, a mid-album track, stands out only for its lack of creativity and disingenuousness. Bush repeats like a broken record the claim that his proposed $30 billion over the next 5 years represents a doubling of funding for the second version of PEPFAR. This simply isn’t true. In fiscal year 2008, the United States is spending around $6 billion on global HIV/AIDS programs. Do the math, and $30 billion over 5 years equals flat funding – an approach that fails to keep up with the expanding demand for treatment.

In short, “PEPFAR: True Leadership” is a painful clash of inconsistent and inefficient policy tunes which will have little chance of making it on any charts tracking true leadership in the fight against global HIV/AIDS. As with any lousy record, however, a chance for redemption remains. If the next U.S. president and Congressional leaders currently debating the legislative sequel to PEPFAR want to strike a more pleasant chord that resonates with the history books, they’d do well to follow the following recipe for success:

First, support the full U.S share of the Global Fund and increase overall funding to the levels public health experts agree are necessary: at least $50 billion by 2013 for HIV/AIDS programs alone. Use generic drugs approved by the WHO to maximize the impact of each dollar spent. Eliminate the unscientific abstinence-until-marriage earmark to give African partners the flexibility to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic based on the actual needs of their communities. Integrate programs that address gender-based violence into PEPFAR, and make sure that the program reaches the most-affected populations. Finally, cancel Africa’s illegitimate debt so that African countries can direct their own funds to build sustainable health infrastructure, train health workers and research affordable prevention technologies.

Michael Swigert is a Program Associate at Africa Action in Washington, DC. Among the issues he researches are trade, the recent elections in Nigeria and the DRC, and the 2008 U.S. presidential elections. Michael served as a volunteer teacher in Ho, Ghana. Sena Tsikata is a Development Associate at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. A Ghanaian native, Sena has worked as a youth reproductive health educator using theater and media with Advantage Productions in Ghana. This article first appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus and may be viewed at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4969

TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world.

By Lane Vanderslice

(December 2, 2007) It was with great sadness that we at the World Hunger Education Service learned of the death of Martin McLaughlin this week. For us, he was a long time colleague, friend, supporter of WHES, and, perhaps most of all, someone who embodied a great ideal of using the power of faith, analysis, and determination to fight for a world where poor and hungry people were more highly valued and treated.

Martin used his faith and his intellectual powers to illuminate why a very rich world could not function well enough to feed very hungry people. His life’s work, as we understand it, was best expressed in his book World Food Security: A Catholic View of Food Policy in the New Millennium.

 

 

Martin, ave atque vale!

Martin McLaughlin, 89, an expert on food policy and an advocate for the world’s poor and hungry, died Nov. 27 of congestive heart failure at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington. He lived in Arlington.