Agriculture sectors expected to fight over final content

By JERRY HAGSTROM

Capital Press

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., on March 17 unveiled a bill to reauthorize the child nutrition programs that would increase funding for those programs by $4.5 billion over 10 years. About $1.2 billion would go to increasing the number of children who receive food and $3.2 billion would go to improvements in the quality of meals and fighting childhood obesity.

The $3.2 billion for improving meal quality would benefit the fruit and vegetable industry. Because the bill determines the foods local school districts and the federal governments purchase, various sectors within agriculture are expected to fight over the final contents of the bill.

In general the campaign to improve diets and reduce obesity would lead to fewer purchases of meat and traditional dairy products and more purchases of fresh fruits and vegetables and low fat dairy products.

But the increase in spending would be likely to lead to increased purchases of all types of foods overall.

The $4.5 billion increase is less than half of the $10 billion over 10 years increase that President Obama proposed in his fiscal year 2011 budget, but Lincoln said it would provide "a path" to achieve Obama's goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. The biggest increase in the past has been $500 million over 10 years, Lincoln said in a news release.

"This legislation will also mark the first time since the inception of the National School Lunch Program that Congress has dedicated this level of resources to increasing the program's reimbursement rate," Lincoln said in the release. " It also invests heavily in new initiatives designed to automatically enroll more eligible low-income children with our National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs and includes a major expansion of afterschool feeding programs."

The bill covers reauthorization of the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Special Supplemental Program for Women Infants, and Children known as WIC and the Child and Adult Care Food Program

According to Lincoln's release, the bill would allow localities to be reimbursed for providing after-school meals rather than snacks, and allow schools in high poverty areas to offer free meals to all students without collecting paper applications.

This simplified application process would encourage more children to sign up for the meals and reduce administrative burdens on schools, Lincoln said.

The bill would simplify certification for low-income children in other ways and make foster children categorically eligible for free meals. It would also require school food authorities to coordinate with institutions operating the Summer Food Service Program to develop and distribute materials to inform families of the availability and location of summer meal sites. It also contains pilot programs to improve the way hungry children get food during out-of-school times.

On the nutrition side, the bill would provide schools that meet new school standards an additional 6 cents per meal. It also gives the agriculture secretary the authority to establish national nutrition standards for all foods sold on school campus throughout the school day.

This provision is likely to be controversial with local school districts that have used money from foods sold in vending machines to pay for school sports programs and with some food companies that fill the machines.

The bill also establishes nutrition requirements for child care providers participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program and provides mandatory funding for schools to establish school gardens and to source local foods into school cafeterias.