As food prices skyrocket, House committee calls for cutting food stamps instead of agriculture subsidies #p2 #tcot

I've focused the food insecurity series on impacts in developing countries.  Food is such a large fraction of their spending — up to 40% in Egypt — that a price spike can be devastating, which is why it often leads to political instability.

We're not only the richest country in the world but its breakbasket, so price spikes only have a limited impact at a national level.  That said, many of the poor in America are living on the edge, so even moderate price spikes for necessities create hardship.  Corn prices, for instance, have nearly doubled from last year at this time — and corn is indeed now in everything.

The following TP repost looks at U.S. food insecurity — and the GOP reponse.

In 2010, 18 percent of the country — nearly one in five households — reported not having enough money to provide food at some point during the year. Last month, food prices increased by 3.9 percent, in the largest jump since 1974. Vegetable prices increased by nearly 50 percent, driven in part by weather disasters damaging crops in place such as Australia and Russia.

These trends are occurring at the same time that unemployment has remained unacceptably high, leaving many Americans with nothing but the social safety net standing between them and going hungry. But as National Journal's Tim Fernholz reported, the House Agriculture Committee has called for a reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) in a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI):

One part of the agriculture budget that has seen increases is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) where spending has tripled over the last ten years. Given the economic downturn and high unemployment which has left many Americans with few options, an increase in nutrition assistance spending is to be expected….  But much of the cost increase has come through government action as opposed to the kind of macroeconomic forces that naturally result in increased subscriptions.

The letter's co-authors — House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-MN) — are correct that, in the face of the Great Recession, food stamp benefits were increased. But those increased benefits have (unfortunately) already been reduced to pay for a jobs bill that Congress passed last year.

rest at http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/22/food-prices-stamps-subsidies/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29