Editorial

Talk about apples and oranges. Last week the Senate Agriculture Committee decided to siphon $220 million a year from an important environmental program to increase funding for school lunches.

Called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the legislation is an update of the federal school lunch program and the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program known as WIC.

To be sure, there is a lot good to be said for having healthful school lunches. The days of "purple bug juice" and "mystery meat" that many people recall from their school days are long gone. These days, the emphasis is on healthful foods that will help reverse the growing problem of childhood obesity.

But there's a problem with how the committee and its chairwoman, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., chose to pay for the $420 million annual increase in the school lunch program. It should be noted that $16 billion a year already goes to school meals.

This year, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has requested $1.2 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program -- known as EQIP. Lincoln and the Senate Ag Committee want to cut it by $220 million. That's a cut of 18 percent from Vilsack's request, and it would reduce EQIP funding to less than was spent in 2009.

The problem is that EQIP is a success story. Described by USDA as a "voluntary conservation program for farmers and ranchers that promotes agricultural production and environmental quality as compatible national goals," it helps them afford the tools they need to protect the environment and save water.

That is a goal all Americans can embrace. It also includes an organic initiative for farmers transitioning to that practice and helps farmers and ranchers conserve ground and surface water, which is much-needed in these years of drought.

EQIP is also popular, so much so that $1.3 billion in applications could not be funded in fiscal year 2009, according to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., ranking minority member of the committee.

The disconnect between the lunch program and EQIP is obvious, but Lincoln said she supported the switch because her choices were limited. To find offsets to pay for the addition to the child nutrition programs, the committee can only tap programs within the USDA. She said that once the bill gets to the Senate Finance Committee, more options will be available for offsets.

We hope that's the case. While we fully support child nutrition, we don't support crippling EQIP to do it.