[Senate Hearing 112-692]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-692
HEALTHY FOOD INITIATIVES,
LOCAL PRODUCTION AND NUTRITION
=======================================================================
HEARING
[before the]
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
NUTRITION AND FORESTRY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
----------
MARCH 7, 2012
----------
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
HEALTHY FOOD INITIATIVES, LOCAL PRODUCTION AND NUTRITION
S. Hrg. 112-692
HEALTHY FOOD INITIATIVES,
LOCAL PRODUCTION AND NUTRITION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
NUTRITION AND FORESTRY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 7, 2012
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/
----------
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COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION AND FORESTRY
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan, Chairwoman
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
TOM HARKIN, Iowa RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
KENT CONRAD, North Dakota THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
MAX BAUCUS, Montana MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
MICHAEL BENNET, Colorado JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
Christopher J. Adamo, Majority Staff Director
Jonathan W. Coppess, Majority Chief Counsel
Jessica L. Williams, Chief Clerk
Michael J. Seyfert, Minority Staff Director
Anne C. Hazlett, Minority Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing(s):
Healthy Food Initiatives, Local Production and Nutrition......... 1
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Wednesday, March 7, 2012
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS
Stabenow, Hon. Debbie, U.S. Senator from the State of Michigan,
Chairwoman, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry... 1
Roberts, Hon. Pat, U.S. Senator from the State of Kansas......... 3
Brown, Hon. Sherrod, U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio......... 4
Casey, Hon. Robert, Jr., U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 20
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont... 33
Panel I
Vilsack, Hon. Thomas, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Washington, DC................................................. 5
Panel II
Carmody, Dan, President, Eastern Market Corporation, Detroit,
Michigan....................................................... 18
Goodman, Anne, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cleveland
Foodbank, Cleveland, Ohio...................................... 25
Hardin, Jody, Farmer, Grady, Arkansas............................ 23
McCormick, Ron, Senior Director of Local Sourcing and Sustainable
Agriculture, Walmart Stores, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas....... 21
Weidman, John, Deputy Executive Director, Food Trust,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania..................................... 27
----------
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Casey, Hon. Robert, Jr....................................... 38
Lugar, Hon. Richard G........................................ 40
(Legislative language for Title II available from the Chief
Clerk).....................................................
Carmody, Dan................................................. 42
Goodman, Anne................................................ 46
Hardin, Jody................................................. 61
McCormick, Ron............................................... 68
Vilsack, Hon. Thomas......................................... 78
Weidman, John (with attachments)............................. 87
Document(s) Submitted for the Record:
Stabenow, Hon. Debbie:
Nutrition Coalition, prepared statement...................... 114
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J.:
Farm to Plate, Appendix D, Dissolving the Double Bind,
Strategies for Expanding Food Access and Developing
Vermont's Local Food System................................ 119
Farm to Plate, Executive Summary............................. 168
Hunger Free Vermont.......................................... 220
Carmody, Dan:
Detroit Eastern Market, prepared statement................... 224
The Detroit Food System Report 2009-2010..................... 264
Question and Answer:
Stabenow, Hon. Debbie:
Written questions to Dan Carmody............................. 342
Written questions to Jody Hardin............................. 349
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 355
Written questions to John Weidman............................ 372
Roberts, Hon. Pat:
Written questions to Ron McCormick........................... 351
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 358
Casey, Hon. Robert, Jr.:
Written questions to Dan Carmody............................. 343
Written questions to Anne Goodman............................ 346
Written questions to Jody Hardin............................. 349
Written questions to Ron McCormick........................... 353
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 364
Written questions to John Weidman............................ 373
Gillibrand, Hon. Kirsten:
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 365
Johanns, Hon. Mike:
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 369
Klobuchar, Hon. Amy:
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 364
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J.:
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 361
Thune, Hon. John:
Written questions to Dan Carmody............................. 344
Written questions to Anne Goodman............................ 347
Written questions to Jody Hardin............................. 350
Written questions to Ron McCormick........................... 353
Written questions to Hon. Tom Vilsack........................ 370
Written questions to John Weidman............................ 376
Carmody, Dan:
Written response to questions from Hon. Debbie Stabenow...... 342
Written response to questions from Hon. Robert Casey, Jr..... 344
Written response to questions from Hon. John Thune........... 344
Goodman, Anne:
Written response to questions from Hon. Robert Casey, Jr..... 346
Written response to questions from Hon. John Thune........... 347
Hardin, Jody:
Written response to questions from Hon. Debbie Stabenow...... 349
Written response to questions from Hon. Robert Casey, Jr..... 349
Written response to questions from Hon. John Thune........... 350
McCormick, Ron:
Written response to questions from Hon. Pat Roberts.......... 351
Written response to questions from Hon. Robert Casey, Jr..... 353
Written response to questions from Hon. John Thune........... 353
Vilsack, Hon. Tom:
Written response to questions from Hon. Debbie Stabenow...... 355
Written response to questions from Hon. Pat Roberts.......... 359
Written response to questions from Hon. Patrick J. Leahy..... 361
Written response to questions from Hon. Robert Casey, Jr..... 364
Written response to questions from Hon. Amy Klobuchar........ 364
Written response to questions from Hon. Kirsten Gillibrand... 365
Written response to questions from Hon. Mike Johanns......... 370
Written response to questions from Hon. John Thune........... 370
Weidman, John:
Written response to questions from Hon. Debbie Stabenow...... 372
Written response to questions from Hon. Robert Casey, Jr..... 373
Written response to questions from Hon. John Thune........... 376
HEALTHY FOOD INITIATIVES,
LOCAL PRODUCTION AND NUTRITION
----------
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
United States Senate,
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry,
Washington, DC
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:40 a.m., in
room 216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Debbie Stabenow,
Chairwoman of the committee, presiding.
Present or submitting a statement: Senators Stabenow,
Leahy, Brown (of Ohio), Casey, Klobuchar, Roberts, Johanns,
Boozman, Grassley, and Thune.
STATEMENT OF HON. DEBBIE STABENOW, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF MICHIGAN, CHAIRWOMAN, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION
AND FORESTRY
Chairwoman Stabenow. Good morning. We will call to
order the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
We are pleased that all of you are here today during
National Agriculture Week, so this is an important time for us
to be having a very important hearing as we continue our
efforts to work together on the 2012 farm bill.
Today, we focus on the increasing demand for locally grown
food and the opportunities that that creates for farmers and
ranchers across the country. We also take a look at how we can
strengthen access to healthy food for communities that are in
need.
You know, when I go home to Michigan on the weekends, I
love seeing the ``Michigan Made'' produce in the supermarkets,
and we have, of course, everything from apples and cherries and
blueberries and sweet corn and hot dogs and sausage and more
kinds of vegetables than you can imagine, and a growing
selection of Michigan beer and wine. So we have everything in
Michigan. It makes me hungry this morning.
But Michigan State University recently partnered with Myers
Stores to promote ``Made in Michigan'' products in the grocery
aisles, including locally grown produce and value-added
products like salsas and jams and spaghetti sauces. So we are
seeing ``Michigan Made'' signs in grocery stores all across the
State. That is a trend I want to see continue, and it is
certainly one that people in Michigan want to see continue.
Whether a Kansas farmer is growing wheat that will be made
into bread in the Wichita bakery or a farmer in Georgia is
selling peaches to schools through a food hub in Atlanta, local
food systems mean a win-win for agriculture and the local
economy. And those are big wins. In Michigan, we know that for
every household that would spend just $10 more on locally grown
food, we could put $40 million back into our economy. When we
buy local, we support local jobs.
The growing demand for local food has also created great
opportunities for young and beginning farmers, which is a big
priority for us on the committee. Through farmers' markets and
food hubs, new farmers are getting help marketing, aggregating,
and processing their products.
We also know how important local food systems have been in
this very difficult economy. Food Policy Councils, farmers'
markets, co-ops, food hubs are bringing farmers together with
low-income school districts, food banks, grocers, and food
deserts to provide fruits, vegetables, and other healthy
products to families in need.
This is not always an easy task. Resources like the Healthy
Food Financing Initiative can help bridge the gap and have
helped new grocers get established in places like Philadelphia
and Detroit. These stores are making profits and providing an
important--meeting an important need in local communities and
using food hubs to connect with local farmers.
We know that, too often, parents who are struggling
multiple jobs and working long hours find it difficult to
prepare healthy meals for their kids. That is why the nutrition
education efforts, coupled with incentives to buy healthy,
nutritious foods, are so important to so many families in so
many communities.
The sad irony is that as the economy declines and so many
people lost their jobs, there was more need for food help in
community food banks, but at the same time, fewer people had
the resources to make the donations to the organizations that
could help. They were squeezed on both sides. But through
innovation and creative partnerships, farmers and local food
systems are helping to bridge the gap.
One of our very first hearings focused on accountability,
stretching every dollar to get the best results, eliminating
duplication, cutting red tape, getting better results for
everyone. That is still the lens through which I view the farm
bill. Local food programs represent a very small percentage of
the farm bill, but they make a very big impact in our
communities, creating jobs and improving access to locally
grown foods.
The continued success of the agricultural economy and the
continued growth of jobs in agriculture require both-- not
either/or, both--traditional production agriculture as well as
local efforts. America's farmers are not just feeding the
world, although they are. They are also feeding their neighbors
and the local community. Local food efforts are leveraging
private dollars to create more economic impact in rural
communities and more choices for consumers.
So I want to thank all of our excellent witnesses that are
here today, certainly thanking the Secretary, and I will
introduce him more formally in a moment, but we appreciate both
the work of Secretary Vilsack and the Department and also all
of you who are involved in very, very important work in
communities all across America.
Without objection, I would like to submit for the record a
letter from 49 nutrition and hunger groups supporting key
programs that protect against hunger, improve nutrition and
health outcomes, and strengthen community-based initiatives
that link farmers with consumers and increase access to healthy
food.
[The letter can be found on page 114 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. I would now like to turn to my friend
and Ranking Member Senator Roberts for his opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. PAT ROBERTS, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
KANSAS
Senator Roberts. Well, I thank my friend. Madam Chairwoman,
thank you for our witnesses for joining today.
And Secretary Tom, it is good to see you here, and thank
you for your cooperation as we work together to protect the
food safety of our country from threats that we both know
exist. I truly appreciate your cooperation, your insight, and
your support. So it is good to see you here today and we look
forward to your testimony.
And I look forward to hearing from each of the witnesses as
we talk about the next farm bill and how we shape policy,
specifically in the areas of nutrition programs and the
marketing of local and regional products.
To those producers who market their crops locally, special
congratulations and keep up the good work. You are part of the
fastest growing sector in agriculture, and I commend farmers
and ranchers around the country for taking advantage of
opportunities to add value to their products. This exciting and
fast paced growth helps bring new opportunities to rural areas.
But I must caution that the belief that locally grown and
purchased food is inherently better, safer, more
environmentally sustainable than food produced elsewhere in our
country can pit one farmer against another farmer, town against
town, and State against State. All food grown in this country
is local to their communities regardless of where it is sold.
Now is a time when all of agriculture needs to come under one
tent to meet the growing demands of a troubled and hungry world
and a global population expected to hit nine billion people in
several decades.
I agree that a freshly sliced ripe tomato grown from your
backyard and garden, and using a little more sodium than
perhaps recommended by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services----
[Laughter.]
Senator Roberts. --can be quite tasty throughout most of
the year. However, this is just not practical in Kansas and
many other States. So sometimes purchasing a tomato grown in
Southeast Kansas at a local farmers' market on a hot summer day
makes the most sense, big time. And sometimes purchasing a
tomato grown in Florida, however, at the local grocery store
during the cold winter months makes the most sense.
Regardless of the season, consumers continue to demand more
local products and many businesses and markets are meeting this
demand without the need for taxpayer support.
The Department recently released a report highlighting 27
programs--27--geared toward the local foods sector. This is
somewhat concerning given our budget situation and coupled with
our mission to reduce waste and duplication and redundancy. I
know the Secretary has been working very hard on this. As we
hear from our witnesses here today, I look forward to hearing
how we can consolidate, how we can streamline, how we can
consider programs that are the best use of our taxpayer
dollars, just like we asked our conservation and rural
development and energy witnesses in previous hearings.
On the nutrition front, the President has requested $70
billion for 2013 to fund the benefits in the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistant Program, SNAP, or formerly known as Food
Stamps. With a retailer trafficking rate of one percent and
improper benefits payments totaling 3.8 percent, annual SNAP
errors total $3.4 billion. Now, let me repeat that, $3.4
billion per year in errors. Now, I want to point out to my
colleagues that the total is over two-thirds of the annual
support programs for our commodity programs that we have been
providing to farmers nationwide who produce most of our food
and fiber. We should be at least as motivated to eliminate
fraud, waste, and abuse loopholes and to find efficiencies--all
hard to do, I know--in SNAP as others are motivated to
eliminate commodity safety net programs.
I appreciate very much the Secretary taking his very
valuable time to testify and I look forward to today's hearing.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much.
And before proceeding, I certainly welcome written opening
statements from colleagues this morning, and I know that
Senator Brown is going to have to leave for another hearing and
has a witness that he wanted to recognize and introduce who
will be on the second panel, so Senator Brown, will you----
STATEMENT OF HON. SHERROD BROWN, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
OHIO
Senator Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
going out of order, and I welcome Secretary Vilsack.
I want to introduce Anne Goodman, who is the CEO and has
been for a dozen years of the Cleveland Foodbank. It is award
winning, one of the best food banks in the United States of
America and she makes us proud in greater Cleveland for the
work she and her paid staff and huge number of volunteer staff
do. I have been to her food bank maybe three, four, or five
times by now and seen the kind of work she does and so
appreciate it. She is one of many heroes in this country
holding the line against hunger.
I so appreciate, too, the work that Secretary Vilsack is
doing on understanding that USDA is reporting record lows of
fraud and abuse in the SNAP program. I know the attention you
pay to that and your Department pays to that. It is such an
important, important program for our country, and to undermine
it and make threats about cutting it because of fraud and abuse
is wrong-headed. We need to attack fraud and abuse, for sure,
but the Secretary is doing a good job. We need to continue
that.
I am so appreciative of the work that he does and that Anne
Goodman does for my community, so thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much.
And now let me turn to Secretary Vilsack, certainly no
stranger to the committee. We very much appreciate your coming
back before us on another very important part of the farm bill.
As we all know, Secretary Vilsack is working hard to
strengthen our American agriculture economy, to revitalize
rural communities, protect and conserve our natural resources,
and to provide a safe, nutritious, and sufficient food supply
for the American people. We all know that he served as Governor
of Iowa for two terms before coming to serve our country in his
current position and has also been in the role of a State
Senator and a mayor, and so has served at every level and we
greatly appreciate your service and the leadership you are
providing with the Department of Agriculture. So welcome this
morning.
STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS VILSACK, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE
Secretary Vilsack. Madam Chair, thank you very much, and to
Senator Roberts, thank you, and to the committee members for
this opportunity.
You have my written statement, but if I could just spend a
minute or two to create a context for why this discussion of
local and regional food systems is important.
I would like to take you back to the mid-1980s. At that
time, I was not in public life. I was a county seat lawyer. I
was operating a county seat law firm where, basically, whatever
walked in the door was what we attended to. We were in the
midst of a very difficult crisis in farm country. There were
many human tragedies that were reported. There were
foreclosures. There were suicides. There were killings. It was
a very, very sad time. I had the great privilege of
representing a number of farmers who were being foreclosed upon
and worked hard to make sure that they had an opportunity to
stay in business.
As a result of that experience and listening to the tragic
stories of these families being torn apart by financial stress,
I decided that if I ever had the opportunity to be engaged in
public life, that I would do everything that I could possibly
do to provide as many diverse opportunities for income for
rural folks as I could find. And I am proud to say that USDA is
engaged in that effort and that is what we are going to discuss
today, one element of a number of elements that we are focused
on.
To rebuild the rural economy in this country, to provide
hope and opportunity for families in rural America, we
obviously start with production agriculture. There is no
question about that. That is the heart and soul of rural
America. And that is why we are proud of the work that those
producers are doing in feeding America and feeding the world
and leading us in record exports, adding value, creating new
opportunities and efficiencies.
We want to complement what they do, and one way we can
complement that is by the bio-based economy, and I want to
acknowledge the Chair's work in putting together a proposal
that would help advance bio-based opportunities in this
country, which creates yet another income opportunity for
farmers and ranchers and growers.
The conservation efforts that this committee has supported
so well creates tremendous opportunities for outdoor
recreation, which we know is a multi-hundred-billion dollar
enterprise that can create new jobs and opportunity in rural
America.
In the same vein, local and regional food systems, which,
as Senator Roberts indicated, is a fast-growing aspect of
agriculture, can, indeed, help create opportunities to maintain
wealth in rural communities, help to create new opportunities
for entrepreneurship and innovation, an entry point for young
farmers to get into this business, and a job creator.
We are using all of the programs at USDA to help all
aspects of agriculture and we are proud of the ``Know Your
Farmer'' compass that Senator Roberts alluded to earlier, a
report that documents ways in which we are using existing
programs that not only help regional and local food systems,
but are also being used to help improve the quality of life in
communities, to expand production agricultural opportunities,
to encourage small business development, to expand
opportunities in outdoor recreation and the bio-based economy.
So these programs that are reported in the compass, the ``Know
Your Farmer, Know Your Food'' compass, are not solely directed
to local and regional food systems. They are just basically
part of the arsenal, the tool chest that we use. Can there be
efficiencies? Absolutely. Can there be consolidation of
programs? For sure. But we want to make sure that we have
enough flexibility to be able to use them to advance the bio-
based economy, to advance production agriculture, to advance
outdoor recreational opportunities, and to advance local and
regional food systems.
I will not spend the committee's time talking in great
detail about SNAP because I suspect that there are going to be
a number of questions about that. Just let me say that in the
last year that we have data for, over 784,000 investigations
and inquiries were made of individuals in terms of SNAP. Forty-
four thousand people were disqualified. We have the lowest
error rate and the lowest fraud rate we have had in the history
of the program. We are not stopping there. We are going to
continue to focus on this issue. We have new rules and
regulations that we are proposing, additional guidance that we
are providing to States. So we are very serious about
maintaining the integrity of this program, and we understand
that that is our responsibility.
At the same time, this is a program that is providing help
and assistance to millions of Americans, and many of them are
working. Forty-one percent of SNAP beneficiaries currently have
earnings in the family. Four major groups make up the SNAP
beneficiaries: Senior citizens, people with disabilities,
children, and working men and women. We obviously want to help
those folks. We want to value work. We want to acknowledge that
they are playing by the rules. And we want to continue to have
a strong and viable program.
So, Madam Chair, we appreciate this opportunity, look
forward to the questions, and thanks again for the chance to
visit with you today.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas Vilsack can be found
on page 78 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, thank you very much.
I wonder if we might start by your expanding on how you see
USDA's role in helping to facilitate these new processes around
local sourcing. We have got a lot of consumer demand for
locally and regionally produced products. That continues to
grow. We have a lot of companies and schools and hospitals that
are now engaging in local sourcing. What do you see as the
USDA's role in really facilitating that process?
Secretary Vilsack. I think there are three basic
responsibilities. One, providing opportunities for people to
get into this business to begin with, whether they are on the
producer side or on the retailer side. That is why we have the
Value-Added Producer Grant Program. That is why we have the
Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. It is why we
provide FSA ownership and operating loans to individuals who
want to get into a business where they are selling locally.
We also have a responsibility to create local markets and
to support local regional food systems, the way in which these
products can be marketed. That is why we have a Farmers' Market
Promotion Program, a 54 percent increase in the number of
farmers' markets in the last three years. It is why we maintain
the Specialty Crop Block Grant that was scheduled to be
eliminated by the previous administration. And it is why we
have used the Rural Cooperative Development effort to try to
promote opportunities for the development of farmers' markets,
food hubs, ways in which these items can be marketed to local
institutions and local consumers.
And finally, there is the need for technical assistance and
infrastructure, brick and mortar opportunities. There are
communities that are interested in having year-long farmers'
markets. To do that in some climates requires brick and mortar
opportunities, so that is why we use the B and I Guaranteed
Loan Program, the Rural Enterprise and Opportunity Grant
Program. We also provide technical assistance through the small
help desk that FSIS has established as well as using the EQIP
program to help expand high hoop houses to extend the growing
season.
So it is establishing an opportunity, creating markets, and
providing the infrastructure that supports those markets.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you. Talk a little bit more
about new and beginning farmers. I know this is an area of
great concern to you and to me and, I think, to all of us, when
the average of an American farmer is 58. We talk a lot about
new opportunities, but in this context, could you talk a little
bit more about how local and regional food systems are helping
new farmers be able to get into agriculture and be able to
succeed.
Secretary Vilsack. One of the trends that we are seeing is
that a lot of people in their 20s and 30s are very interested
in coming back to rural areas and becoming interested in
farming, perhaps not on a large scale because the capital needs
are so intense, but they would like to have their foot in the
door. They would like to have an entry point. And certainly
developing a small value-added operation--maybe it is an
organic operation, it does not necessarily have to be--is one
way of doing that. Or maybe it is taking a portion of the
production agricultural system and setting aside an acre or two
and diversifying that operation and giving a family member and
opportunity to get back into the business.
So we provide loans for farmers through the Ownership and
Operating Loan Program of FSA. We have got the Beginning Farmer
and Rancher Development Program that provides resources to
enable people to have a good business plan that they, in turn,
can take to FSA or a bank to get the initial financing. We try
to establish with Farm-to-School Programs and other activities
opportunities for additional market and an awareness of the
local market, both on the institutional purchaser side and on
the consumer side. So this is an entry point.
Now, having said that, I think it is going to be very
important for this committee, as you craft the farm bill, to be
very acutely aware of the challenges we have with the aging
nature of our farmers, particularly our production agriculture
operations, and to look not just at the farm bill provisions,
but also at tax and regulatory provisions. There needs to be
some understanding and appreciation for how crop insurance
should be managed differently between beginning operations and
more mature operations, what the credit needs are of beginning
operations, and how difficult it is today to transfer land or
even to consider transferring land because of the way the tax
structures are.
Chairwoman Stabenow. And finally, let me ask, we have heard
you talk about the SNAP program and congratulate you for
focusing on fraud and abuse in the system, because in this
climate, we need every dollar to go to somebody who needs it
because there are just way too many people that need temporary
help right now. But in the farm bill, what additional measures
would you suggest that we should be providing you in terms of
tools to be able to fight fraud and abuse, to be able to
improve the programs, because we want to make sure those
dollars are going exactly where they need to be.
Secretary Vilsack. Well, certainly in the area of fraud, we
are deeply concerned about high-risk areas and locations, and
oftentimes those higher-risk locations are not large grocery
store chain stores where a substantial percentage--84 percent
of SNAP benefits are redeemed in 16 percent of the stores in
America. But many of the fraud issues that we are dealing with
are in small-scale venues.
Tightening up what stores can qualify for SNAP
participation would be helpful. Right now, the rules are fairly
loose and it allows smaller-scale stores to participate, and
oftentimes we find repeat patterns of trafficking and
difficulties in those stores. Even though we have sanctioned
them, even though we have disqualified certain owners, the
location gets transferred to a new owner and it ends up
creating the same type of opportunity. So that would be one
suggestion I would make in the time. I see my time has expired.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Yes. Well, thank you very much. My
time is up and I will turn to Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts. Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary. My
questions are probably redundant, but that has never stopped me
before.
The Department's ``Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food''
report issued last week, as I indicated in my opening
statement, highlighted, and then you talked about this, 27
programs that target local and regional agriculture food
systems--27 programs for the fastest-growing segment of
agriculture. My question is pretty simple, and you have already
gotten into this. Are 27 different programs necessary for a
sector of agriculture that represents less than two percent of
our agricultural economy but seems to be growing like
gangbusters on their own? With budgets as tight as they are,
should we not streamline and consolidate and, most of all,
focus on programs that deliver the most bang for the taxpayer
buck?
Now, you said in your opening statement, and you have
already basically answered the Chairwoman's question, but you
said in your opening statement that you have some new requests
to allow you to better streamline this or to consolidate. Could
you focus on that and just--but you have also said in your
statement that you need flexibility in certain areas, and that
maybe one program might work in one particular area but another
program would fit in another area. I just do not think we need
27. At any rate, would you amplify on that, sir, and what do
you need from us?
Secretary Vilsack. Well, I think there needs to be a
program that makes it a little bit easier for people to get in
the farming business. That does not necessarily have to be
limited to local and regional food systems. It can also be
production agricultural opportunities.
Senator Roberts. Sure.
Secretary Vilsack. So that is one area. And if you had a
program that basically consolidated many of the programs that
are currently providing that entry point with enough
flexibility to use it for production agriculture or for local
regional food systems, you could satisfy--you could have fewer
programs and still satisfy the need.
We obviously want to continue to support markets, both
local and foreign market opportunities, and that is why the
Farmers' Market Promotion Program is an important tool. The
Community Facility Grant Program is used for many purposes. It
is used for hospitals, police stations, fire stations, you know
this. But it can also be used for brick and mortar
opportunities to build and to expand on a farmers' market and
create a better venue for more opportunities. The ability to
use that program flexibly and to have adequate resources in the
program obviously will allow us to use that single program for
brick and mortar opportunities.
You may be focusing on a larger-scale operation. The
Chairwoman is certainly familiar with Eastern Market. She
certainly has made me familiar with Eastern Market. And that is
a rather large operation and it may not be sufficient for a
Community Facility Grant because it is located in an urban
area. Maybe a little bit more flexibility with our Business and
Industry Loan Program in terms of precisely where we can invest
those resources, if it can be of help to rural facilities as
opposed to solely being located in a rural community.
So there are many ways to deal with this. But I want to
point out that these 27 programs and regulations and so forth
that are identified are not necessarily solely dedicated to
local and regional food systems. They also serve--for example,
the EQIP program is mentioned there. Well, you know very well
that EQIP is primarily being used by production agriculture, as
it should be.
Senator Roberts. I appreciate that. Your own Economic
Research Service found that producers growing and selling
locally employed 13 workers per $13 million in revenue in 2008.
What definition of ``local'' did the ERS use in their analysis?
Does the Department have a standard definition of ``local''
that is used all across the program?
Secretary Vilsack. Senator, I want to make sure that I
understand. There has been some confusion about that ERS
report. I want to make sure that we all understand. For every
million dollars of sales to local and regional food systems, it
supports 13 operators. So, in other words, 13 farming
operations----
Senator Roberts. Right.
Secretary Vilsack. --small-scale, are supported. On the
production agriculture scale, it is one million for every
seven-and-a-half producers. That is basically the statistic.
The definitions are very, very complicated, and I think you
have actually adequately pointed this out in your opening
statement, that local--everything that is sold, regardless of
where it ultimately ends up, has a local impact. I think ERS
basically was taking a look at a geographic region that was
fairly constrained. When I talk about this, I talk about areas
within 50 to 100 miles that surround when we talk about schools
and institutional purchasers.
Senator Roberts. Would the Department want to define
``local'' so it has a standard definition, and what would that
definition be?
Secretary Vilsack. Well----
Senator Roberts. Let us let the last part of that go. Just
let me ask you, would you like to define what ``local'' means
so we have a standard definition?
Secretary Vilsack. To be candid with you, Senator, I would
prefer that the committee focus on its single definition of
``rural.'' That is causing far more confusion than the
``local'' definition. If we had a single definition of
``rural,'' we could apply that to this topic, as well.
I think we have at least 11 different definitions. We
really need to be thinking carefully about what it means to
have a rural development aspect of USDA and how we can help
rural communities. Even if it is investing in Eastern Market in
the middle of a city, that could be of some benefit to folks
who live, work, and raise their families in rural areas.
Senator Roberts. You are not using any of this money to
recruit three-point shooters for Iowa State when they beat
Kansas State, are you?
[Laughter.]
Secretary Vilsack. I am not going to--can I take the Fifth
on that?
[Laughter.]
Senator Roberts. I am looking into that.
Secretary Vilsack. Did we not win twice this year, if I am
not mistaken?
Senator Roberts. Yes, and if Baylor had not defeated you,
we would have played you again for the third shot, but--
Secretary Vilsack. Well, actually, we beat Baylor just a
few days ago. I want to bring you up to date on this. We are
now in the top 25.
[Laughter.]
Senator Roberts. We have to play Baylor.
Chairwoman Stabenow. All right----
Senator Roberts. Then if we beat Baylor, we play you.
Secretary Vilsack. Good luck, Senator.
Senator Roberts. But it is that one guy that--I just
understood that, somehow, he got a grant from the USDA on the
three-point shots.
Secretary Vilsack. I must say, I love Fred Horburg. I will
do anything for him.
Chairwoman Stabenow. I just want to point out for the
record that the Big Ten Championship Title is shared by
Michigan and Michigan State, just for the record, this year.
[Laughter.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. So we are going on to the tournament.
Senator Klobuchar.
Senator Klobuchar. Okay. That is a hard act to follow, but
I would assume that those players all have had nutritious food
in Iowa, is that correct?
Secretary Vilsack. Yes.
Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Good. Back to our topic at hand
here, I want to thank you for your work implementing the
nutrition bill. We were very pleased to work on it and I want
to thank the Chairwoman for her leadership. And I wanted to
talk about a piece of that, and that is the vending machines.
What are you doing to ensure that the food and beverages sold
in the vending machines stack up to the nutrition standards
that we now have for the lunch lines?
Secretary Vilsack. Senator, we will be coming out with a
rule on what we refer to as competitive foods, which would
include vending machines and a la carte lines, which we believe
is very consistent with the efforts at improving the quality of
meals and aligning them with the dietary guidelines. And I
think, frankly, we want to make that healthy choice a
relatively easy choice. We want to make an informed choice. And
I think our rule will do that.
Senator Klobuchar. Good. And do you know when that will
come out?
Secretary Vilsack. You know, I never want to guess on all
the various folks who have to sign off on these things, but I
can tell you that it is our intent to get this out very
quickly.
Senator Klobuchar. Okay. As you may know, 110 Minnesota
elementary schools are participating in the Fresh Fruit and
Vegetable Program. Could you talk a little bit about that and
how it is going and why you think it is important.
Secretary Vilsack. Well, we have a very interesting
opportunity that we are exploring in Michigan and Florida on
the issue of fresh fruits and vegetables. We have to get
through a protest process, but we really want to see whether or
not we can empower schools to use more of their resources that
are provided for school lunch to purchase locally fresh fruits
and vegetables and we are going to have this pilot in two
States to see how it works.
You know, I think there is tremendous opportunity here, not
only in terms of purchasing but also encouraging schools to
have gardens, communities to have gardens that would be
supportive. We know from a number of examples that there are
youngsters who learn great lessons from growing something in a
garden and then seeing it in an a la carte line or in a salad
bar or in a meal that they consume at school.
And we at USDA have been engaged in this. We have a
People's Garden Program. There are over 1,500 People's Gardens.
I am proud to say that we donated almost 900,000 pounds of
fruits and vegetables to food banks across the country where
USDA offices are located.
So we are heavily engaged in this. We have got the
Department of Defense issue. We have got the Fresh Fruit Snack
Program. We have got this pilot that we are working. We are
working in Massachusetts on a SNAP effort to see whether or not
point-of-sale incentives can encourage SNAP families to
participate and purchase more fruits and vegetables. So there
is a concerted effort and a consistent effort throughout all of
our programs.
Senator Klobuchar. Okay. And then how about how the school
districts are doing? Obviously, they are facing budget cuts and
they want to do their best to serve healthy foods and we want
to do our best to make sure they have the tools they need to do
that. Could you talk a little bit about what USDA is doing to
make sure that school districts have the support that they need
to comply with the rules.
Secretary Vilsack. Well, we--the Congress was kind enough
to provide for the first time in 30 years additional support
for the School Lunch and School Breakfast Program with a six-
cent per meal reimbursement rate increase, which is the first
non-inflationary rate increase that schools could qualify for.
We are encouraging schools to participate and to adopt the new
nutrition standards quickly so that they can benefit from that.
We are also working with schools to make sure that their
pricing of meals is properly aligned to make sure that they are
utilizing their resources properly.
We are also trying to make the certification and the
qualification programs and processes for participation in the
various programs easier and less of an administrative burden,
particularly in communities that have high unemployment or high
poverty rates. By making it streamlined, we are hopeful to save
administrative dollars that are going into paperwork and
redirect it into improving the nutritional value of the meals.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. And then one last question.
This past December, I joined a number of our colleagues. We
sent a letter to you urging you and Ambassador Kirk to defend
the country of origin labeling law from challenges at the WTO.
I appreciate your commitment to ensuring that you will work
with our trade representatives on the implementation of this
law. How do you see the ``Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food''
initiative as helping producers market their products to
consumers interested in this information?
Secretary Vilsack. Well, you know, part of the great thing
about this effort is that it allows consumers to personally get
to know the producers. You go to a farmers' market, you can see
tremendous community activity and involvement, conversation and
communication taking place. And as a result, I think we are
getting consumers that have a better understanding, and maybe
hopefully a better appreciation for American farmers and
ranchers.
I would say that one group of Americans that are under-
valued, under-appreciated are our farmers and ranchers, and by
having these opportunities to meet producers, to talk about the
weather conditions and the impact on crops, to talk about pests
and diseases that might impact some of this--there may be less
at a farmers' market one year than another, people get to know
why that is so--there may be a better appreciation for how
challenging this business is, whether it is a local and
regional food system effort or production agriculture that is
exporting to China.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you.
Senator Johanns.
Senator Johanns. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Secretary, let me just start out and again give you
some applause for the Ag Outlook Forum. As you know, the former
Secretaries participated in that. It was great to be with them
again. But, secondly, I looked around the room. Well over 1,000
attendees, which is a remarkable turnout for a program, so
congratulations to you and your team. It was really good.
Secretary Vilsack. Well, Senator, people really, really
appreciated that forum, and we actually had an overflow room.
You would have seen another thousand people. It was a record
attendance. So we appreciate your participation in it.
Senator Johanns. Yes, glad to do it.
You, in your testimony, highlighted the Farmers' Marketing
Promotion Program. You supported during your time as Secretary
a number of programs to try to boost local farming initiatives.
You have emphasized the importance of extending energy title
programs and a whole host of items. Yet all of these programs,
as you know, do not have a baseline. So at the end of this
year, they just simply expire in terms of not having funding to
go forward. In addition, in the budget that was submitted by
the USDA, there is not any money, I think the footnote
indicated, subject to reauthorization or something of that
nature.
Give us your best advice on how to handle this long, long
list of programs, many of which have a lot of support, not only
at the USDA but in the country, because today, there just is
not funding available, and as you know, it is going to be a
very, very tight budget process to even get a farm bill. What
are your thoughts on how we figure out how to create or get the
money to pay for those programs?
Secretary Vilsack. Senator, I think the key here is to take
a look at programs that you know are going to continue to exist
and figure out how to make them flexible enough to give the
Department the capacity to use them in creative ways.
I will take the Business and Industry Loan Program, for
example. That program could help brick and mortar opportunities
for local and regional food systems. It could also help the
bio-based economy. The problem is that, currently, the only way
we can use that is for, as you well know, for commercially
viable products and things that have already been established
in the market, and the result of that is that it really narrows
what we can do with that program. There is a tremendous
capacity in that program, and with fees and so forth, it is not
a great strain on the budget. To the extent that you can take
existing programs and create the flexibility to use them
creatively, that is number one.
Number two, we are going to be challenged at USDA to
continue to look for new partners in all of this, and that is
why we have reached out to the foundation world. We think
foundations not only can provide grant opportunities, but they
also invest money to be able to make grants, and we are
encouraging foundations to consider investment opportunities in
rural areas. The problem has been that we have not really done
a good job of acquainting people with what those opportunities
are.
The third thing is to look outside the farm bill. There are
the constraints of the farm bill. When we deal with beginning
farmers, for example, as I alluded to earlier, I think there
are tax issues there that probably could be as helpful and as
beneficial in terms of being able to promote land transfers and
things of that nature that we often do not talk about. We talk
about the estate tax, and that is certainly understandable. But
right now, as you well know, in your State and my State, land
values are going up and people are landlocked because they are
concerned about the income tax consequences. So I think there
are a lot of creative ways to deal with this even though we are
constrained fiscally.
Senator Johanns. You know, I had a group in my office just
within the last few days and the purpose for the meeting--it
was a group from back home--they wanted to talk about
additional funding for ag research. One need only look back
briefly at what we have done with ag research in our country,
all across the United States, and it is really the reason why
agriculture has done so many positive things here.
I offered this statement, and I would like your assessment
of it. The more we take and spend on other programs in the farm
bill, the less money is going to be available for important
programs like research and other things. And the old days of,
well, we got that out of the farm bill, now let us go back and
they will give us a whole bunch more for ag research is really
over because we do not have the money.
Offer your thoughts on balancing the priorities in the farm
bill and trying to figure out how do we get money to programs
that have really made a difference, have really been game
changers, like research.
Secretary Vilsack. Well, as you know, Senator, I am very
interested in seeing a continued investment in research, an
extended investment in research, and our budget has reflected
that. And the President also believes in the power of research.
You know, again, I think it is about being really creative
of how those research dollars are used to promote multiple
purposes. I mean, the challenge that--that is one challenge.
The second challenge is to continue to promote the
competitive nature of research because that compels land grant
universities to be creative in terms of partnerships and
collaborations that stretch those research dollars further than
they might otherwise be stretched--a private sector partner,
another land grant university partner, a foundation partner.
You know, we are challenged to be creative. That is what this
time forces us to do, and actually, it is an exciting time. I
do not see this as a difficult and challenging time. I see this
as an exciting opportunity for us to really be creative. The
key here is for you all to give us the flexibility to be
creative, not to pigeonhole us in specific program requirements
that make it very difficult for us to be collaborative.
And finally, allow us to focus on regional opportunities,
not just specific communities or specific business
opportunities. Enable us to really use our resources in
regional strategies because that is also a way of extending
limited resources and actually getting a bigger bang for your
buck.
Senator Johanns. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you.
Senator Boozman.
Senator Boozman. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Secretary, in Arkansas, we have had issues with some of
our farmers' markets because of a lack of a definition of
``local.'' People are selling products there as local, and yet
they are not local. So some clarity would be helpful. I think
Senator Roberts alluded to that earlier.
The other problem that we have got is really to define
``rural.'' You know, we have got the same sort of thing. So
could you comment on that and kind of tell us how that is
progressing? That would really help as we go forward.
Secretary Vilsack. Well, Senator, first of all, let me say
that we look forward to working with the committee and with you
and other members of the committee on these definitional issues
because they are important, and we look forward to figuring out
ideas creatively to deal with these issues.
But let me just say, as it relates to the definition of
rural, we have been too focused on population numbers--too
focused on population numbers--as opposed to the impact that a
particular investment could have on folks in rural areas. And I
think we would be better off having a definition of rural that
allows us to look at a number of criteria and to score or gauge
those criteria in defining the impact of an investment on rural
areas as opposed to saying that investment must be made in a
community of 10,000 or 5,000 or 20,000 or 50,000.
That is--to Senator Johanns's question, that is the kind of
narrowness that I understand in the past, but in this day and
age, please, give us the capacity and then judge us by the
results of our investments as opposed to pigeonholing us in a
particular--so you can only invest in this community with this
program. Give us the capacity to look regionally, to think
creatively, to look for collaborative partnerships. So the
definition of ``rural,'' it seems to me, ought to be based on a
series of factors that we can evaluate.
Senator Boozman. I agree, and certainly, I think the
committee would agree in the sense that we need to go forward
and use that input and committee input and then actually come
up with a definition. That would be really helpful.
The other thing I would really like for you to look at for
me, I was at the Boonville facility, the Dale Bumpers Research
Facility, this last week. It is scheduled for closure. It is a
2,000-acre facility, and we are talking about local markets.
The research that is going on there really is unique in the
sense that it is small farm production-type research. It is the
only place in the country that is doing research on lands and
goats, which with the increased immigration, there is a
tremendous market for those kind of things right now, lots of
that type of research. It is the only place in the country,
too, where they are doing phosphorous, seeing how that is
affecting our streams and things like that. So as we have the
local production going, then there are byproducts from that as
you fertilize the soil and things like that.
But I would really like for you to look at that facility. I
think it is unique. I am not just saying that because I happen
to be from Arkansas and represent that. But truly, the research
that is going on there--I am seeing some snickers back in the
audience, but the research going on there, I do not think there
is any place to duplicate it.
And then the other problem is, if we decided in the future
that we needed to get it done, some of the structures that are
set up literally would take ten or 15 years to do. But that is
just kind of for what it is worth.
Secretary Vilsack. Senator, you know, these are always
really hard decisions and we will--we take them very seriously
and we understand that the research that is being done in all
these facilities is important, and our belief is that that
important research is going to continue.
Let me just simply say one other aspect of these closings
that is to the questions that we have talked about earlier
about beginning farmers. Many of these facilities are
surrounded by hundreds, in some cases thousands, of acres of
land. And right now, there is a very prescriptive way in which
USDA is required to deal with the land that they will have to
get rid of or sell or transfer.
And it seems to us that maybe this is an opportunity for us
to take a look at incenting returning veterans who want to get
into farming and beginning farming operations by making that
land more available than it is today and giving us a few more
opportunities and a few more tools to use that land in a
creative way in partnership with a land grant university or in
partnership with another university that may be co-located or
near there. We think that is another creative solution to this
issue of how do beginning farmers get started. Well, maybe the
Federal Government can lease them land. How do we bring
veterans an opportunity if they are really interested in
returning to their home State and actually getting in the
farming business.
Senator Boozman. No, I agree, and yet I think that another
way to look at it is to do just that, that some of this unique
research that has been started to carry that on, you know, with
the veterans' help.
So thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much, and thank you
again, Mr. Secretary. We appreciate your service and we
appreciate your coming today on a very important topic. So we
look forward to working with you on many of these ideas that
you have laid out today, so thank you very much.
Secretary Vilsack. Thank you.
Chairwoman Stabenow. And we will ask our second panel to
come forward. Senator Roberts will be back in a moment. He
stepped out for the Finance Committee, but we will ask folks to
come forward. Thank you.
[Pause.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, thank you very much to each of
you for joining us today for this very important hearing. We
appreciate all of your great work, and let me introduce each of
our witnesses first and then we will turn it over to each of
you. As you know, we ask for five minutes of verbal testimony.
We welcome any other written testimony that you would like to
share with the committee, as well.
First, I am very pleased to introduce our first witness
today, a resident of the great City of Detroit, Michigan, Mr.
Dan Carmody, who is the President of Eastern Market Corporation
in Detroit since 2007 when he took the lead in operating the
region's premier public market and revitalizing the business
district around the market. He is now leading the charge to
convert Eastern Market into a healthy metropolitan food hub.
Before coming to Eastern Market, Mr. Carmody led three
different economic development organizations throughout the
Midwest. He provided more than 30 North American Community
Development Programs with consultant services. So we are very
pleased to have you and appreciate so much all the great work
that you are doing in Detroit.
Now, I would like to turn to Senator Boozman to introduce
two excellent witnesses. How did you get two witnesses from
Arkansas today? This must be pretty special--
Senator Boozman. Because of your generosity.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, we are happy to do it. We are
very impressed with your witnesses, so Senator Boozman.
Senator Boozman. Thank you very much. We are really pleased
to have Jody Hardin from Grady, Arkansas. Jody is a fifth
generation Arkansas farmer and a pioneer and advocate for local
access in Arkansas. He has helped establish several local
farmers' markets in our State and is a strong advocate for
local and community-driven agricultural systems.
I think, Jody, I have heard that testifying before Congress
is a bit of a family tradition for you all. Jody said his
grandfather used to testify regularly. But we really are proud
of you to be here and continue that tradition.
Ron McCormick is also with us, of Bentonville, Arkansas.
Ron is the Senior Director for Local and Sustainable Produce
Sourcing for Walmart. We are proud of Walmart in Arkansas and
proud of the fact that Walmart has chosen to be a global retail
leader in providing access to locally sourced foods and other
sustainable practices. Many people do not realize this, but one
of Walmart's greatest strengths is logistics, and their
knowledge and experience can help us clear many hurdles that
have come between many Americans and the local foods they would
like to have access to.
Under Ron's leadership, Walmart has committed to opening as
many as 300 stores serving food to underserved areas. Walmart
has pledged to sell one billion lbs of locally sourced foods
produced by small and medium-sized farmers by 2015.
Furthermore, Walmart is looking on improved nutrition
initiatives and is being such a generous partner in the fight
against hunger in the United States and also in the world. So,
Ron, thank you very much for being here.
We are very, very proud of our Arkansas representatives
today, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Stabenow. As you should be, and we welcome them.
Ms. Goodman, who was introduced already by Senator Sherrod
Brown, let me just say, has been the President and the CEO of
the Cleveland Foodbank, the largest hunger relief organization
in Northeast Ohio, since 1999, and we appreciate all of your
efforts and welcome you here today, as well.
And I know that Senator Casey had wanted to be here, Mr.
Weidman, to be able--and he may hopefully be able to be here.
He is juggling, as many of our members are today, multiple
hearings. But we certainly want to welcome you Mr. John Weidman
comes to us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mr. Weidman is the
Deputy Executive Director of the Food Trust, a Philadelphia-
based nonprofit that works to ensure that everyone has access
to affordable and nutritious food. He provides oversight for
the organization's National Supermarket Campaign and its
regional farmers' markets program and led the effort to open
Philadelphia's Headhouse Farmers' Market. We appreciate also
your serving on the Pennsylvania Emergency Food Assistance
Advisory Committee and other important awards.
So welcome to each and every one of you, and again, we ask
for five minutes of opening comments before we turn to
questions. And first, we will turn to Mr. Carmody. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF DAN CARMODY, PRESIDENT, EASTERN MARKET
CORPORATION, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Mr. Carmody. Good morning, Senator. Thank you. It is a
pleasure to be here, and thank you, members, for hosting this
really important discussion. Warm greetings from the east side
of Detroit.
I thought in this sterile Federal office we would bring you
a little slice of Eastern Market.
[Beginning of videotape.]
Mr. Fogelman. Eastern Market Corporation assumed management
of the market in August of 2006, and in July of 2007, we
applied to the USDA to accept Bridge Cards on behalf of the
farmers and vendors here at the market. The first week that we
did the Bridge Card program, we accepted $83 in tokens. This
past July, we sold over $14,000 in tokens.
Double-Up Food Bucks is a SNAP incentive program. Working
with the Fair Food Network, Eastern Market Corporation piloted
the program in the summer of 2009. We kicked it off full-
fledged with them in 2010 and 2011 and it has been incredibly
successful.
Basically, the program works like this. Our customers come
to our Welcome Center and they purchase at least $20 of Food
Stamp Bridge Card tokens, and we will match them up to $20 with
a Double-Up Food Buck token. And the difference between the
Double-Up Food Bucks tokens and the regular ones is the Double-
Up are only good for Michigan-grown fruits and vegetables. So
it is really a win-win. It puts more produce in the hands of
the people that often have the least access to it, and it also
puts more money into our growers' pockets.
Mr. Jentzen. It is money in the bank. You know, it keeps
revenue generating.
Ms. Leadley. The fact that folks can use their EBT here at
the market and can get access to produce that they have maybe
not experienced before, and certainly are out of a lot of
people's price range if they did not have the EBT is really
awesome.
Mr. Young. It brings more money back into Detroit, back
down to the city.
Mr. Stadler. I think it is really a good thing because it
helps promote the whole entire marketplace.
Mr. Gyergyov. I guess that is the bottom line, is just more
income that we bring in for ourselves.
Ms. Bielat. Very surprised at the diversity. It is older
people, younger people, a lot of different races, a lot of
different ethnicities. It is just the diverse people that
have----
Mr. Fogelman. When you add the $791,646 in Bridge Card
sales since the program began in 2007 to the $236,592 in
Double-Up Food Bucks distributed over the past three years, you
have over a million dollars circulated here at Detroit's
Eastern Market, and that is over a million dollars into the
pockets of our farmers and vendors, which means over a million
dollars directly back into the Michigan economy.
[End of videotape.]
Mr. Carmody. Now, we are proud of our work to leverage SNAP
to benefit both consumers and farmers. We think that is the way
to go to try to make more with the tools we have got. But that
million dollars is a small drop in the bucket to total SNAP
redeemed in the City of Detroit, and as we pointed out earlier,
despite geometric growth, farmers' markets still are a fraction
of our overall food industry.
Fortunately, Eastern Market is not just a farmers' market.
It really is a regional food hub. In addition to our retail
markets, we also have a wholesale market that serves regional
growers and we are in a food district surrounded by 80 food
processing and distribution retail businesses.
This notion of complementary entrepreneurial small local
food, regional food businesses existing with larger-scale food
systems is, I think, really at the heart of some of the
discussions today. We think there is a huge opportunity. We see
other industries, publishing, where blogs thrive while major
dailies contract and merge. We see my favorite metaphor from
the world of beer, where in 1980, there were 101 breweries.
Today, the large brewers continue to get bigger, but since
1980, more than 1,800 small craft breweries have set up shop,
selling beer based on consumer demand, no government program,
people wanting to pay more for a little bit different quality
product.
We think that is what has to happen in our food world. We
think that there is a chance to really create a lot of wealth
and new jobs in Detroit and regions throughout the country
based on local and regional food systems working in
complementary fashion with regional, global, and national
systems.
Healthy Metropolitan Food Hub, we take those words
carefully. Healthy, because we believe food hubs can help
create multiple channels for these small and emerging growers
and processors who are trying to create new jobs and new
wealth. Healthy, because we think that can contribute. As a
public market, we are a place where the public convenes, a
place where we can have a discussion about what is nutritious
food. Lastly, metropolitan because we believe that is the scale
that is important, because that is where rural, urban, and
suburban places can come together.
On your sheet, you will see a number of initiatives we have
done to try to build ourselves out as a food hub, including
working with Detroit Public Schools, trying to, again, grow the
number of processors that are starting out in Detroit. Four
years ago, we had no specialty food processors. This time of
year, we have as many as 60. We are building a community
kitchen to make sure that we can explode that number in the
future.
I would be happy to answer any further questions about the
USDA support we have got, relatively small, a couple hundred
thousand dollars over the last few years to leverage more than
$15 million in private, foundation, and city support to help
rebuild this old market into a healthy metropolitan food hub.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carmody can be found on page
42 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, thank you very much.
I see that Senator Casey is here, and I know I briefly
introduced Mr. Weidman, but if you wanted to make comments, as
well, I told him that you were coming and certainly wanted to
have an opportunity to welcome him.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT CASEY, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Casey. Well, thanks very much, Madam Chair. I
appreciate you calling this hearing and for your leadership and
for covering for me.
And as I come to this hearing, there is so much to eat on
the table here, we should have more of these.
Chairwoman Stabenow. That is right.
Senator Casey. We are usually not greeted with those kinds
of surprises.
I will be brief, but I did want to thank our witnesses for
being here at this hearing and also wanted to take a couple of
minutes to introduce John Weidman and talk a little bit about
his background, some of which you have already heard, and I
have not had the chance to formally say hello to him, and my
arm is not that long so I will not try to reach over the table.
But John is the Deputy Executive Director of the Food
Trust, which is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit corporation
working to ensure that everyone has access to affordable and
nutritious food. He advocates for public policy changes at the
local, State, and Federal levels, and he helps us better
understand the factors impacting the nutrition of lower-income
individuals. He provides oversight for the organization's
National Supermarket Campaign and its regional farmers' market
program and led the effort to open Philadelphia's Headhouse
Farmers' Market.
John has 18 years of experience in public policy advocacy
in nonprofit communication. He holds a Master's, and you might
have heard this before, a Master's degree in political science
from the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the
Pennsylvania Emergency Food Assistance Advisory Committee and
the Board of Directors for the Pennsylvania Public Interest
Research Group.
I wanted to also add that I appreciate the work that the
Food Trust itself does to connect poor children and families to
the SNAP program as well as other vital services. As the
Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, I asked our
committee, the staff of our committee, to put together a report
on Food Stamps and the SNAP program and the impact that the
program has had during the recession. We know that the program
prevented literally 4.4 million--I want to say that again, 4.4
million families--from falling into poverty than otherwise
would have been the case in the midst of what has been for so
many families a horrific recession. We know that millions of
families had to temporarily rely upon the program when they
lost their jobs and lost their ability to feed their families.
So this program, as we all know, is critical to millions of
American families and especially those who are vulnerable. It
has the lowest error rate in the program's history and it
operates quite efficiently. That is why I have been a strong
supporter of it and I know this will be a continuing source of
focus as we work on the farm bill and other issues.
So, Madam Chair, I am grateful for your leadership on all
these issues, and John, I want to formally welcome you here
today.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much.
We will proceed with Mr. McCormick. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF RON McCORMICK, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF LOCAL SOURCING
AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, WALMART STORES, INC., BENTONVILLE,
ARKANSAS
Mr. McCormick. Good morning, Madam Chair. I want to thank
you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I am Ron
McCormick. I am responsible for local produce sourcing programs
and I lead our sustainable agriculture efforts at Walmart U.S.
It is an honor to be here to talk about our locally grown
produce sourcing program and our nutrition initiatives to help
customers make healthy choices.
Our consumer insights research shows us that more than 40
percent of our customers tell us that buying local really
matters to them. They believe it tastes better, they know it is
fresher, and they like supporting local economies.
We have been sourcing local produce at Walmart for many
years, but we formalized that commitment last year, in 2010, by
pledging to double our sales of locally-grown produce,
achieving nine percent of our total produce sales by the year
2015. We are really excited to be able to say that we exceeded
that nine percent this last year and are continuing to see huge
demand from our customers and huge sales on locally-grown
produce.
Walmart buys more U.S. agricultural products than any other
retailer in the world, so we see an opportunity to use our
position in the marketplace to improve access to healthy and
affordable local foods for our customers and for consumers all
across the nation.
Aside from our scale, we also see that our geographic
footprint provides us with the unique ability to affect change.
We operate 41 state-of-the-art grocery distribution centers
across the country. The advantage here is that many of them are
located in potentially productive agricultural areas. We work
to source more produce from areas close to these centers,
allowing us to cut costs from the supply chain and to sell a
more affordable, fresher product to our customers.
One of the many important benefits of sourcing locally
relates to a larger Walmart initiative that addresses an issue
our customers face every day: How to feed their families
affordable and nutritious meals. With the understanding that
making it easier to eat healthy depends on making it easier to
shop healthy, we launched a nutrition initiative to reformulate
thousands of everyday food items, locate more stores near food
deserts, save our customers a billion dollars on buying fresh
fruits and vegetables, support nutrition education programs,
and launch a new front-of-pack icon to help busy families
identify healthier options as they shop in our stores.
We also have a responsibility and an opportunity to promote
more sustainable practices in the food and agriculture supply
chain. One step we believe that is important is reducing the
miles that food travels from farm to fork. For example, a few
years ago, we bought--jalapenos came from Mexico and just a
very few Southwestern States. Today, we are buying jalapenos
from farmers in 27 different States, even as far north as
Minnesota.
But this commitment to grow and sell more local produce has
not come without challenges. We regularly talk to our suppliers
and our farmers, your constituents, and we understand that
farming specialty crops is difficult and risky due to
unpredictable weather, the lack of a ready labor force, complex
H(2)(a) requirements, a lack of capital, and a general aging of
the American farmers.
Large farms in traditional agricultural States will always
be a major part of our business. As a big retailer, we value
those relationships. But as the population grows and as we
encourage greater consumption of fruits and vegetables, we will
need even more sources of product to meet the demand that we
anticipate in the future. These challenges present an
opportunity for us to do more to help small-scale farmers.
One step we have taken, and working with the USDA in this
effort, is creating small farmer intensive workshops which
outline what farmers need to do to work with big customers like
Walmart and other retailers and the food service industry.
These workshops focus on food safety, labeling, refrigeration
and packaging requirements, equipment and workforce needs, and
third-party resources. As we expand this program, it is very
important that everyone has access to it and we are working to
identify and create more opportunities for women and minority-
owned farmers to sell to Walmart.
Of course, it is impossible for us to talk to every farmer
and deal with every grower, so we strongly support farmer-led
co-ops and third-party management partners. These partnerships
add value and allow farmers access to markets that they
otherwise would not.
But let me stress that sourcing locally cannot compromise
food safety or the health and wellness of our customers, so we
worked with the Global Food Safety Initiative to create a
scalable approach to food safety for our small and developing
suppliers. This gives Walmart the confidence that these farmers
have critical food safety programs in place.
To scale this, we need to engage stakeholders in ag finance
and a whole range of sources. To the end that we are making
headway here, I think what speaks the loudest is the amount of
product that we have been able to buy from local farmers and
that our shoppers find in our stores all across the country,
whether it is from States like Michigan, where we source dozens
of items, to other States where we are just developing brand
new programs that we hope someday will rival those
availabilities of product close to the customer that we do
business with. Working together, we see the possibility of
doing so much more in the future.
We certainly appreciate--on behalf of all the Walmart
associates that are working on this program, we thank you for
the opportunity to be here and the opportunity to work together
with so many important people.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McCormick can be found on
page 68 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, thank you very much.
Mr. Hardin, welcome.
STATEMENT OF JODY HARDIN, FARMER, GRADY, ARKANSAS
Mr. Hardin. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this
opportunity to be here to talk about local food production.
I am a fifth generation family farmer from Grady, Arkansas.
We own 1,000 acres with about 50 percent of it leased to other
row crop farmers. We raise 150 acres in vegetables that we sell
in regional wholesale markets and directly to consumers through
a community-supported agriculture program and in our own farm
stores.
I have been participating in farmers' markets for 26 years,
income which I used to pay for my college education and my
boarding school. As founder and President of the Certified
Arkansas Farmers' Market, I have witnessed the tremendous
growth in demand for local foods and its impact on the rural
economy. We have about 37 employees that are employed in my
local food businesses, including jobs at our store in a
downtown food desert. I am here today to share the successful
economic opportunities I have found in producing food for local
markets and to discuss the barriers that we face for continued
growth.
In 2009, we received a Farmers' Market Promotion Program
grant from USDA's Ag Marketing Service. Through competitive
grants, FMPP increases and strengthens direct producer-to-
consumer channels by funding marketing proposals for CSAs,
farmers' markets, roadside stands, and other direct marketing
strategies, such as agrotourism.
Our small FMPP grant had big payoffs. We went from about
400 customers per market day to over 1,000. We quadrupled our
annual sales thanks to FMPP. Our 2008 season came in at about
$300,000 in sales. In 2010, our sales were about $1.5 million,
the year after our grant.
As farmers got wind of the increasing consumer demand, we
went from between 12 to 15 farmers per market day to over 30.
We developed 20 lasting partnerships with local and regional
chefs that continue today. All in all, we were able to build a
larger clientele, we were able to build a larger base of
farmers, and we generated dollars back into the local economy.
In fact, I can honestly say that without our FMPP grant, our
market and the economy would be lagging.
But we have a real problem. There is a widespread and
growing demand for locally-produced food, but significant
barriers exist to meeting this demand. All roads point to a
glass ceiling for small-scale diversified farms, a glass
ceiling that we can shatter with investment in minimal
processing, aggregation, storage, infrastructure, as well as
appropriate market technologies, training, and risk management
tools.
For example, in the summer in Arkansas, a large number of
our crops come off the farm around the same time. This is when
farmers need help the most because prices are very low. At the
same time, schools are looking for an inventory of affordable
local foods that they can plan their meals out in advance of
the coming school year. If we could process food in the summer
when farmers are producing and schools are out using simple
processing techniques like IQF and then store these products
for the school year, farmers would win and schools would win.
School food service companies like Sysco can work with the food
center to distribute the food.
One part of the solution is an aggregation and distribution
center which we have tried to start. Unfortunately, despite our
best efforts and my own experience, we cannot seem to get the
food center off the ground. We need public dollars to jump-
start this initiative. Just like we found with our FMPP grant,
a little seed money in the short term can make a huge
difference in the long term.
Two of our major distributors as well as retailers are
begging me to connect them with local farmers and send them
local food. Their combined sales in Arkansas are about half-a-
billion dollars per year. What we lack, however, is the
appropriate infrastructure to get the foods ready for market.
We need FMPP plus a local marketing promotion program to enable
farmers to supply wholesale local foods.
We have more and more farmers and ranchers wanting to
connect with schools, grocery stores, and restaurants to boost
income. Along with renewing and increasing funding for FMPP in
the new farm bill, I would like to see the program expanded
programmatically and in dollars to include grants for these
scaled-up sales.
Chairwoman Stabenow. you recently championed the National
Food Safety Farmer Training Program. Thank you for this very
much. In Arkansas, most of our farmers do not have GAP
certification which our three food distribution companies
require. As you write the next farm bill, I would like to see
this program funded so it can train farmers and small
processors on food safety measures.
I learned from my father and on my own the extraordinary
challenges that specialty crop producers and diversified farm
operators face when it comes to crop insurance. I want the new
farm bill to authorize the creation and implementation of a
whole farm revenue insurance product that is available in all
States and in all counties. The product would work for all
diversified operations, including but not limited to specialty
crops, mixed grain, livestock, or dairy operations, both
organic and conventional.
Finally, I would like to speak to the many crop insurance
barriers that organic producers face. Organic farmers have been
required to pay a surcharge for coverage based on a dubious
assumption that organic production methods result in more risk.
Second, FSA and RMA lack reliable organic price data. As a
result, organic farmers have found that most crop insurance
policies do not pay farmers for losses at organic prices, but
instead at convention prices for the crop. The new farm bill
should ensure RMA has sufficient data on organic crop prices so
producers can receive payments at the correct prices. I would
also like for the new farm bill to remove the organic premium
surcharge on all crops.
Thank you very much for this opportunity and I would be
happy to take questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hardin can be found on page
61 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much.
Ms. Goodman, welcome.
STATEMENT OF ANNE GOODMAN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, CLEVELAND FOODBANK, CLEVELAND, OHIO
Ms. Goodman. Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chairwoman and
members of the committee. I am honored to be here representing
food banks and agencies involved in the day-to-day fight
against hunger. There are 200 food banks covering every county
in the United States who are members of Feeding America.
Together, we serve more than 61,000 pantries, shelters, soup
kitchens, and other organizations that provide food directly to
people in need.
The need is currently greater than ever. Demand continues
to increase, even as we have begun to see a decline in
unemployment. We are seeing new faces. Many have run out of
unemployment benefits, exhausted savings, or had to take jobs
paying far less than they were making before the recession.
They have turned to pantries, the SNAP program, or both for
help.
But while our ability to meet the need has been tested, the
effectiveness with which food banks and the Federal nutrition
programs together have responded provides me with great hope.
It is critical that we continue to support these programs to
ensure their ability to meet the immediate need, but it is
important to note these investments also reap long-term
benefits, preventing higher health, education, and workforce
productivity costs associated with hunger and poor nutrition.
One of the greatest success stories of the recent recession
is how effectively SNAP responded to protect families from
hunger. SNAP expands in hard times, helping families buy
groceries and freeing up resources for other needs like rent,
utilities, and transportation. SNAP is serving millions of
people who cannot find a job, can only find part-time work, or
cannot work because of a disability.
Do not get me wrong, it is still a struggle. On average,
SNAP only allows $1.50 per person per meal. So in most cases,
SNAP does not provide enough money to last recipients
throughout the month. There are also many people struggling to
put food on the table who do not qualify for SNAP. In both
cases, they turn to emergency food pantries to fill the gaps.
Any cuts to SNAP benefits or eligibility would only increase
the overwhelming need we are already seeing.
To illustrate this point, let me tell you about Cassandra,
who has three children and is making $11 an hour working full-
time. She is not eligible for SNAP. She takes home $1,468 a
month after taxes. She pays rent, utilities, puts gas in the
car to get to work, and one of her children has asthma,
requiring frequent doctor visits and daily medication. There is
no room for error for Cassandra, no room for a muffler that
needs repairing or a few days off from work to care for a sick
child. She makes choices. One month, she pays the electric
bill, and the next it is the gas bill. Food is a genuine
luxury. Because the food bank helped Cassandra supplement her
meager food budget, she was able to pay both the electric bill
and the gas bill in the same month.
Our food bank and the pantries we serve rely on The
Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, which supplied 27
percent of the food we distributed last year. TEFAP provides
some of the most nutritious food we distribute, such as milk,
green beans, and chickens. Unfortunately, unlike SNAP, TEFAP
does not automatically grow when need grows. In fact, TEFAP
actually declined markedly when we needed it most, falling 30
percent in 2011. Because strong agriculture markets led to
fewer bonus purchases, no other sources are increasing to fill
that gap and more Federal TEFAP support is urgently needed.
In addition to emergency food, we continue to develop
programs to better meet our clients' needs. One of those areas
is nutrition. In 2011, 28 percent of the food we distributed
was produce. We are working on a project right now to allow
local farmers to blast-freeze their product and sell it year-
round. A portion of that would be donated so our food bank
could distribute frozen fruits and vegetables throughout the
year.
Providing healthy food is important, but sometimes people
do not know how to prepare it. I have handed out produce
countless times where a client did not know what to do with
something, like leeks or a turnip, and passed it over. But when
we provide recipes and samples, people are informed and they
make different choices. We educate clients about how to grow,
cook, and shop for healthy food on a limited budget. We use
community gardens, tastings, and demonstrations to show the
impact of nutrition on health and just how good healthy food
can taste.
Another area where we are evolving to meet our clients'
needs is the growing senior population. We deliver food boxes
to several senior programs throughout the Commodity
Supplemental Food Program. I talked to a woman at one site
about how hard it is to take two buses to get to the nearest
grocery store. Even then, she is only able to carry two bags
home. When we could distribute the CSFP food box package to her
once a month, it was a Godsend.
I have spent time with her and I wish you could, too. I
urge each one of you to visit your local food bank. Decisions
that are small numbers in the Federal budget have such an
impact on real people. Feeding the hungry is not a partisan
issue, it is a collective responsibility. Indeed, I think it is
a moral responsibility. We have the power to make sure people
like Cassandra do not have to choose between food and heat for
her family and that an elderly woman is not home without
groceries.
With our nation focused on deficit reduction, I am here to
plead with you not to cut these programs. I urge you instead to
make small, targeted investments to enable food banks like mine
to better meet the need.
With that, I offer these recommendations. Protect SNAP from
cuts and harmful policy changes. The program is working as
intended to provide benefits that are timely, targeted, and
temporary. I can tell you for certain that charity cannot make
up the difference if SNAP benefits or eligibility are cut.
Increase the funding for mandatory TEFAP and set aside a
portion of the specialty crop purchase requirements to go
specifically to food banks. The farm bill should also clarify
USDA's authority to make TEFAP bonus purchases.
Let me close by telling you about a special woman who has
been visiting a food bank pantry for several months. She sent
us a check for five dollars over the holidays. Even with scarce
resources, she made the sacrifice because she wanted to do her
part. I am confident that even in a time of limited resources,
we, too, can make decisions that reflect our shared value of
helping our neighbors in need.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Goodman can be found on page
46 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much.
Mr. Weidman.
STATEMENT OF JOHN WEIDMAN, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOOD
TRUST, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Mr. Weidman. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member
Roberts, and members of the committee for inviting me to
testify. My name is John Weidman and I am the Deputy Executive
Director of the Food Trust, a nonprofit group founded in
Philadelphia 20 years ago with the mission of improving access
to affordable, nutritious food. We work with over 65,000
children each year through the SNAP-Ed Program, where we work
to implement fun and innovative nutrition education programs
that have been proven to reduce childhood obesity by 50
percent. We also run 26 farmers' markets, manage a Healthy
Corner Store Program with over 600 stores, and work around the
country to bring more grocery stores to urban and rural areas.
For the past five months, the Food Trust has been convening
a regional farm bill working group composed of farmers, public
health advocates, environmentalists, and hunger advocates to
discuss the upcoming farm bill reauthorization. We know that
the farm bill will have a huge impact on greater Philadelphia.
Thousands living in poverty in our region depend on SNAP and
those SNAP dollars, in turn, are a vital part of the economy in
low-income communities.
The farm bill also supports our regional food system
through programs like the Farmers' Market Nutrition Program,
the Farmers' Market Promotion Program, and the Community Food
Projects Program. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity
through the farm bill to improve access to healthy food in low-
income communities across the country.
And I want to share with you today three innovative food
initiatives that we are involved with which are improving the
health and economies of urban and rural communities and which
have the potential to be scaled up and expanded.
The first is the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, launched
in 2004 as a public-private partnership with the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania, the Food Trust, and the Reinvestment Fund. The
program provides one-time loan and grant financing to attract
grocery stores to underserved urban and rural areas. And using
a State investment of $30 million leveraged with additional
capital by TRF, the program has led to 88 projects totaling
$190 million in investment and 5,000 jobs.
Stores range from full-service 70,000-square-foot
supermarkets to small corner groceries, farmers' markets, and
co-ops, and approximately two-thirds of the projects are in
rural areas and small towns. Research shows that access
matters. The Food Trust and Policy Link reviewed 132 different
studies that found that access impacts health, it improves
eating habits, and those habits prevent obesity.
In 2011, using the Pennsylvania program as a model, the
Obama administration launched the Healthy Food Financing
Initiative. The Food Trust has been proud to be working with
our partners, Policy Link, the Reinvestment Fund, and the
National Grocers Association, and many others to realize this
vision. Since its launch, $77 million has been allocated for
HFFI projects and other projects improving access to healthy
food. And by providing this one-time loan and grant financing
as an incentive, the HFFI will attract fresh food retailers the
communities want and need.
There is a significant momentum for HFFI around the
country, and places like New York, Illinois, California, New
Jersey, New Orleans have all created financing programs based
on the Pennsylvania model. In each of these programs, CDFIs
have been key drivers of success because of their ability to
leverage additional private dollars. For example, in New York,
the Low Income Investment Fund, a CDFI, was able to leverage a
$10 million State investment with an additional $20 million in
private capital.
This national effort, though, is still in a very nascent
stage, and in order to realize the incredible success that
Pennsylvania has achieved over five years, we will need a large
and sustained effort over several years. The good news is that
we know what to do and we can do it successfully, and this one-
time infusion of grant and loan financing results in businesses
that are both economic and social anchors for urban and rural
areas.
Senator Gillibrand has introduced legislation to build on
the National Healthy Food Financing Program through the
creation of a National Fund Manager housed at the USDA. This
structure would mirror closely the public-private partnership
of the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Program and allow the leverage
of millions in private capital nationally.
The farm bill is an appropriate vehicle to fully invest in
a national effort to bring healthy food access to every city
and small town that needs it.
Next, I want to tell you about efforts in our region to get
more locally grown produce into schools. In greater
Philadelphia, there is great momentum around farm-to-school
programs to educate youth and increase consumption of healthy
food. In particular, I want to talk about the Eat Fresh Here
Program that we launched with the School District of
Philadelphia. It is providing fresh locally grown fruits and
vegetables to students, teachers, and school staff. And working
with Fair Food and a food hub called the Common Market, we have
provided 32 schools with over 56,000 pounds of fresh produce so
far this year. The program provides training and technical
assistance for school cafeteria staff and cooks that help them
incorporate fresh produce into school meals, and many more
farm-to-school programs like Eat Fresh Here could be started or
scaled up around the nation, helping to prevent childhood
obesity and grow rural farm jobs.
And last, a Healthy Food Incentive Program called the
Philly Food Bucks Program, similar to Mr. Carmody's program at
Eastern Market. Over the last two years, the Food Trust in
partnership with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health
has piloted the Philly Food Bucks Program, a $2 coupon provided
to SNAP beneficiaries for every $5 spent at any of our 26
farmers' markets in Philadelphia. And the evaluation of the
program has yielded some very interesting data. Over two years,
SNAP sales have increased 335 percent within our farmers'
market network, and 77 percent of Philly Food Bucks users
report an increased intake of fruits and vegetables. So the
evaluation has shown that Philly Food Bucks is working to
encourage healthier eating and our farmers like it, too. Over
70 percent reported an increase in sales due to the program.
In closing, we are proud of the success we are having in
our region, yet we know that one in three children will develop
Type II diabetes in their lifetime. This is not acceptable for
our children's health and it is not sustainable for our
economy. By expanding these food initiatives nationally, we
know that we can create thousands of jobs as well as prevent
obesity and diet-related diseases that threaten to worsen our
deficit. Our region's continued progress depends on a strong
farm bill that steers our citizens towards healthier foods,
supports regional farm systems, and ensures that all children
grow up surrounded by easily accessible and affordable
nutritious food.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weidman can be found on page
87 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much. We appreciate all
of your testimony and the really important work that all of you
are doing.
Let me start with Dan Carmody and what is happening at
Eastern Market. You have been operating a farmers' market and a
food hub for a lot of years. Eastern Market has been around a
long time. But I know that you are now working with other
communities, both around Detroit but also up in Traverse City
in northern Michigan and so on, helping them to set up food
hubs or working with them to try to do that. What have you
found to be the greatest challenges in getting some of these
markets started or helping markets to expand into serving as a
food hub?
Mr. Carmody. A lot of communities with successful farmers'
markets are trying to figure out how to take the next step,
because really, the difference between a farmers' market is
farmer-to-public sales. A food hub is farmer-to-multiple sale
channels. When I lose sleep at night, it is because this surge
of young starter farmer-ranchers comes to the market in August
with their truckload of tomatoes and they are not there for
Senator Roberts' November delivery date. Somebody has got to be
in the middle helping to develop the multiple sales channels
and go into processing or third-party transactions to go to
Walmart or wherever. And especially the smaller farmers, that
does not happen by itself.
In terms of trying to take farmers' markets to the next
step, in the State of Michigan, the State MDA in partnership
with MSU is trying to build a regional food hub system
throughout the State. We have been working with people in
Traverse City that have a great facility, an old mental health
facility that has a full commissary that could be a very
integrated food processing distribution facility overnight. But
most places do not have facilities in place and trying to build
that aggregation point, there is an infrastructure need.
I think before you get to the infrastructure, though, you
have to get some best practices around networking and who needs
to be at the table, and that grouping of producers and
distributors and aggregators and end users have to get together
and try to understand where the gaps are in the system. We
found that sort of backdoor working with institutional buyers
in Chicago--in Detroit, trying to build new distribution
channels for our growers. Detroit Public Schools wants to
replace 30 percent of its student meal content from highly
processed to locally grown or minimally processed, but we had
to send Michigan-grown produce to Indianapolis because we could
not find a small processing house to cut, wash, and pack the
product.
We discovered a senior Meals on Wheels program that imports
from Jackson, Mississippi, daily 4,100 senior meals. Now, no
knock against Jackson, Mississippi, but somehow, there ought to
be a food system that can supply that product a little closer
to home.
And so as you begin to peel back and try to figure out
where those gaps are in the market, that is where the food hub
concept comes in. Again, it is not replacing. It is really
trying to figure out where those entrepreneurial opportunities
are that maybe are a little smaller scale that the bigger
systems are overlooking.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you.
Mr. Hardin, I wonder a couple of things. One, I know you
have a farmers' market in Argenta and it is in a food desert--
--
Mr. Hardin. Yes.
Chairwoman Stabenow. --a very important concept now as we
look at what is happening for so many urban areas and certain
rural areas. How has the local community around the market
developed since you have created it? Have you seen a change?
Mr. Hardin. Yes, a very good question. I have witnessed
something I had never seen before in growth. About 2007, we
began our local food movement, developing a brand new market
called the Certified Arkansas Farmers' Market, and since then,
we have just seen--it was a blighted area. No one would ever
come down to this part of town. And since 2007, we have seen
new restaurants, new grocery stores, which I co-founded one,
but there was tremendous community investment in it and support
from that, and now I think there are over 1,200 homes planned
in the downtown area now. People want to live there. People
were building walkable communities. It is an amazing growth
that we have seen and everybody around Central Arkansas has
witnessed this growth and everybody now wants to create their
own farmers' market and help their farmers.
Chairwoman Stabenow. That is great.
Mr. Hardin. Thank you.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Mr. McCormick--I am sorry, Mr.
Carmody----
Mr. Carmody. Could I just add an outsider's perspective on
the Argenta situation?
Chairwoman Stabenow. Absolutely.
Mr. Carmody. I actually wrote an economic development
strategy in 1996 before all of that was happening. But I think
it just illustrates a good point between what happens when you
take light rail and a transportation system investment and add
it on to a local food system investment.
Mr. Hardin. Exactly.
Mr. Carmody. You really get miraculous results. It is,
again, one of those examples, I think, in an austere fiscal
world when you can add two plus two and get ten.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Great. Thanks.
And then, finally, before my time is up, Mr. McCormick,
could you just speak to a little bit more--you have talked
about small farmers and the work that Walmart is doing, which
we appreciate. But if you had a food hub, would that allow you
organizationally to be able to do more with small growers or
medium-sized growers in the kinds of things we are talking
about here?
Mr. McCormick. I think when I go to bed at night and have
dreams of things that would be wonderful, having food hubs near
our 41 food distribution centers would be the answer to my
personal prayers and a great part of our business model,
because for us, we are talking about more sustainable
agriculture and for building a supply chain that can sustain
itself. And I think, there, it is an integrated supply chain,
not just buying from lots of small farmers.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Great. Thank you very much.
Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts. Well, thank you, Madam Chairman, and it is
an absolute delight to see my colleague from Vermont, Senator
Leahy, come here. I thought it was a dairy hearing.
Chairwoman Stabenow. They are passing notes back and forth.
[Laughter.]
Senator Roberts. Anyway, the champion of the small farmer
in Vermont, five-foot-two, and a retired stockbroker, but then
there is another whole story to that.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Do not go there.
Senator Roberts. I will not go there.
[Laughter.]
Senator Roberts. Mr. McCormick, meeting your food safety
requirements, why is it difficult or more difficult for a
grower with 50 acres to implement food safety standards and
undergo food safety audits? It would seem to me that somebody
with smaller land and limited commodities, that you could
implement the good agriculture practices as opposed to somebody
in Western Kansas who has 5,000 acres or 15,000 acres and
several different commodities.
Mr. McCormick. Senator, I think that it is not necessarily
harder. It is a matter of the obstacles being greater for a
small farmer that does not have a lot of capital and does not
have a lot of time to invest in it.
Senator Roberts. What obstacles?
Mr. McCormick. A piece of it is simply the cost of the
audit itself. So for a small farmer to pay for an audit that is
going to average them around $1,500, it is a large capital
outlay for them.
Senator Roberts. So on scale----
Mr. McCormick. Yes.
Senator Roberts. Okay.
Mr. McCormick. So it is difficult. And one of the great
values of routine audits is more than just what the auditor
helps prevent happening. It is the repeated visits from an
audit help a farmer get better, whether he is small or he is
large. It helps him develop a system that prevents the threats
to food safety from occurring. So often for a very small farmer
that wants to grow to be a bigger farmer, there is a capital
outlay that is going to come there, too. So the audit is--and
it is a new experience sometimes for the small farmer. So it is
just a daunting experience and the time that is involved and
the capital outlay is a lot for a very small farmer.
Senator Roberts. Does Walmart require third-party food
safety audits of all suppliers, regardless of size?
Mr. McCormick. All suppliers, regardless of size. Our
smallest farmers, we have kind of a step-up program where we
work to take them to GFSI certification standards, the highest
standards that are around.
Senator Roberts. What is the cost of an audit for a grower
with 50 acres of land, and how have you been able to try to
mitigate these costs with these folks?
Mr. McCormick. So an audit can cost $750 to about $1,500,
plus sometimes the travel cost of the audit. Often, the travel
cost is some of the most expensive. So one of the things that
our small farmers tend to benefit from us is that our food
safety department and the small farmers in an area around one
of our distribution centers coordinate our activity together.
So rather than have an auditor fly in and pay a large amount of
money to fly in to do the audit for that one farmer----
Senator Roberts. Fly in?
Mr. McCormick. Fly in, drive in, it depends on where the
farm is. That is a challenge to food safety today, is having--
--
Senator Roberts. Why can they not drive? Why do they have
to fly? How do they fly? General aviation, or what?
Mr. McCormick. They fly on commercial aviation, and it
depends on where it is.
Senator Roberts. Yes.
Mr. McCormick. Some small farmers are--and big farmers are
fortunate that they have auditors close by. Other farmers,
especially small farmers in areas where there is not a
concentration of small farmers, the auditor has to fly into a
town and drive also into the farm.
Senator Roberts. I have got it. All right.
Mr. Hardin, one concern I hear from consumers purchasing at
local farmers' markets is that in not all cases are the
products actually grown and processed and shipped locally. In
other words, if you had a Chiquita banana sold at the local
farmers' market, clearly, that was not grown down the street,
or for that matter even in this country. What have the markets
in your areas done to ensure vendors are selling only the local
product?
Mr. Hardin. Well, that was a big issue for us starting
about 2004 or 2005 and we have been working for several years
trying to figure it out. We have determined that source
verification, actually creating markets where we require a
source verification, where we go on farms, some market
management goes there, and we have realized that is just
necessary. We cannot have a successful market without it
because there are impostors that will come into the market and
they will put on their farmer hat and sell things and tell the
customer they came from local areas and it is really displacing
a local farmer. So it is really important to me that we verify
the source of the produce.
Senator Roberts. Mr. Weidman, you provide local fresh
fruits and vegetables to schools in Philadelphia all year. How
do you do that in the winter?
Mr. Weidman. Yes, it is tougher in the winter, absolutely.
So we work seasonally, mainly with the food hub, the common
market. There are some products that do go year-round, though.
We actually have a farmers' market in Philadelphia that is open
all throughout the winter, root vegetables and other things,
but----
Senator Roberts. Where do they get those from in the middle
of the winter?
Mr. Weidman. Some of them are using--I am actually not a
farming expert, but some of them use hoop houses, things that
try to extend the growing season. But, yes, it is definitely--
we have the most stuff comes in closer to the growing season
and the harvest season.
Senator Roberts. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. My time
is up.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, thank you very much.
And Senator Leahy, former Chairman of the committee,
welcome this morning.
STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF VERMONT
Senator Leahy. Thank you, Chairwoman. Of course, I remember
working with Senator Roberts when he chaired the House
Agriculture Committee. Thank you for holding the hearing. I
think it is important----
Senator Roberts. Senator, that was another era.
[Laughter.]
Senator Roberts. Thrilling days of yesteryear, however, I
would add.
Senator Leahy. It was not that long ago. Neither one of us
had hair then, either.
[Laughter.]
Senator Leahy. I think it is important to have this kind of
a hearing. It shows the importance of local food as an economic
driver in our States. It know it is extremely important in
mine.
But before I get started on the questions, I would ask
consent, Madam Chairwoman, to submit several documents for the
record relating to local food issues in Vermont.
[The information of Hon. Patrick J. Leahy can be found on
pages 114, 119, 168 and 220 in the appendix.]
Chairwoman Stabenow. Without objection.
Senator Leahy. Now, as I read your testimony, many of you
point out the Farmers' Market Promotion Program has been
instrumental in strengthening producer-to-consumer efforts,
improving access to local foods. In Vermont, we have had the
availability of EBT machines so participants in Vermont's SNAP
program--we call it Three Squares Vermont-- can take advantage
of farmers' markets. We have 37 market locations. EBT sales
totaled around $70,000. That may seem small in large States. It
is significant in a small State like ours.
Mr. Hardin, you mentioned some of the successes you have
seen with the EBT program in Arkansas. What are some of the
barriers that you found in expanding EBT to farmers' markets,
because even a State as large as Arkansas, I am sure you have
some of the same issues that we have in our State of Vermont.
Mr. Hardin. Yes. I think our sales are about the same as
Vermont. We have really had a slow start, but it right now
seems to be gaining momentum.
I would like to see an expansion of the program, or access
to more of the electronic wireless devices so that farmers can,
you know, CSA programs can have these things and farm stores
can have the tools so that----
Senator Leahy. Is that one of the biggest barriers?
Mr. Hardin. No, it is not, actually. One of the biggest
barriers is just an awareness of where the markets are and that
you can--that EBT is accepted at farmers' markets. We really
have lacking in a campaign in our State to really get it out
there. But as the awareness grows, we are seeing much more
interest and participation each year, and I think we are really
building on that this year and next. I have seen a lot of
growth recently.
Senator Leahy. I wrote the farm-to-school program included
in the child nutrition law, and this year it is going to be
rolled out with the mandatory grant money to get school kids
locally grown, nutritious foods. But we also find the problems
when you have either outdated or non-existent infrastructure.
How can States work best on that to get food from a regional or
local area to the schools? Could you have more flexible
delivery options, for example?
Mr. Hardin. Well, we--are you still addressing me?
Senator Leahy. Sure, as well as anybody else who wants to
jump in on that one, too.
Mr. Hardin. Well, I am sure there is a better answer here,
but I would like to say that we have struggled with this. What
we would like to do is set up aggregation processing facilities
geared directly for our schools. Our biggest concern from the
schools are that they cannot--there is no inventory of local
food and they are required to do a lot more meal planning
throughout the school year. So we want to have an inventory,
have some kind of projection of what will be available for the
school year so that they can adequately plan for their menus.
Regional markets, more organized distribution centers.
Senator Leahy. Does anybody else want to add to that?
Mr. Carmody. One thing that could contribute mightily would
be to allow commodity entitlement credits to be used to buy
local products. It would be a procedural change.
Senator Leahy. Thank you.
Mr. Weidman. And we are working with the National Farm-To-
School Network regionally in our region, kind of taking a
traveling road show to the different school districts to teach
things like knife skills training and recipe demonstrations to
help them, you know, encourage them to get more fresh produce
and locally grown produce into the school meals.
Mr. Carmody. I would just further add that it is really--
you have to think 360 about this. It is how to get to the kids,
the teachers, and parents. And so we will be announcing in
April in Detroit with the DPS a major expansion in their school
garden program tied to kids learning in the classroom what they
eat in the cafeteria and then trying to build in a parent
education piece through the SNAP education program, and it
really ties it all together.
Senator Leahy. Anyone else? Thank you.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Thank you very much.
Senator Leahy. Chairwoman, thank you. I will probably have
some further questions for the record.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Well, thank you very, very much.
Before we close the hearing, I did want to ask Ms. Goodman,
because I think your testimony was so important in terms of
need and what is happening for real families every day and how
important all of the food assistance programs are, but I am
wondering, how do each of the programs that the food banks
utilize fit together from your standpoint to be able to meet
the need, whether it is emergency food assistance or SNAP or
food bank dollars or Commodity Supplemental Food Program. How
do they fit together, and what happens when one of those is
cut?
Ms. Goodman. Well, that is a great question and I am glad
you asked. Here today, I mentioned CSFP, TEFAP, and SNAP, and
those three particularly work together well with the private
efforts of food banks. It is kind of a public-private
leveraging capability that is really perfect, in my view.
But SNAP really is the first line of defense, I would say,
for people, because it is grocery dollars that people can get
to supplement budgets that just do not allow them to get by, as
I said.
And then they are not going to be able to make it through
the month, and there are people, as I mentioned, that do not
get--are not eligible for SNAP benefits. So there is the
Emergency Food System, and we are providing, however small, six
percent of the emergency food in this country. So we have got
to be there, and 75 percent of that food actually comes from
the private sector. But 25 percent does come from the TEFAP
program and it is among the most nutritious food that we
provide. I mean, last year, off the top of my head, we had
milk, we had chicken, we had green beans, we had fresh oranges.
I mean, it is tremendous product. So that Emergency Food System
is the safety net, I would say, for the people who are not
eligible for SNAP or who are using SNAP and it does not make it
through the month.
And then CSFP is particularly important because SNAP is so
underutilized by seniors. There are a couple of reasons, I
think. The first is it is particularly stigmatized by seniors
and many seniors that I have seen think, well, somebody needs
it worse than I do. But then mobility issues are a really big
deal, just getting down to the Department of Job and Family
Services to apply for Food Stamps and then getting to the
grocery store, to use the example that I mentioned in my
testimony. So just accessing the grocery store makes Food
Stamps perhaps moot in some cases. So those food boxes that are
delivered directly to, say, the senior high-rise for seniors
are crucial, and there are actually meals in those boxes that
are specifically designed for the nutritional needs of those
senior clients.
So you can see that certainly each of them is serving a
specific need and they work together in a way that is not
necessarily duplicative but complementary, and they are working
with the private sector, as well. So we are all working
together.
Chairwoman Stabenow. Right. Well, thank you very much,
again, to all of you. This is a very, very important part of
what we do in constructing a farm bill to meet nutritional
needs and create new opportunities for growers around every
community, I think, in America. So we thank you again for your
testimony.
Any additional questions for the record should be submitted
to the committee clerk five business days from today, which is
five o'clock on Wednesday, March 14.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:32 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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