This year marks the 50-year anniversary of President Johnson's "War on Poverty". Although he first discussed it in a January 1964 speech, the first food assistance program didn't become law until August of that year, noted Bill Herndon, a professor with Mississippi State University.
Those first pilot programs were far different than today's food assistance. At that time, people who qualified had to purchase stamps, essentially getting a discount on their food purchases. As the program grew, it eventually was available to all citizens by 1975, Herndon explained to those attending the 40th Annual Southern Dairy Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
Since that era, the program has grown considerably and now accounts for nearly 80 percent of farm bill spending. Of course the marriage of the farm and food bill was initially designed to get both rural and urban votes to pass the bill.
During his presentation, Herndon reviewed some food stamp spending benchmarks:
• 1975, 17.1 million people receiving $4.6 billion in food assistance
• 1990, 20 million receiving $15.4 billion
• 1995, 26.6 million receiving $4.6 billion
• 2000, 17.2 million receiving $17.1 billion
• 2007, 26.3 million receiving $33.2 billion
• 2013, a record 47.6 million receiving a record $79.6 billion.
Not only was the 47.6 million people receiving $79.6 billion in food assistance a new record, so was the fact that 23,052 U.S. households qualified for the program in rules that were loosened after the latest recession. The slide from www.trivisonno.com charts that growth on the number of Americans receiving food assistance.
As one can imagine at this spending level, as food assistance reached record proportions, so did food assistance program's share of the farm bill. In 2002, roughly 58 percent of farm bill spending went to food assistance. That rose steadily to the current 80 percent watermark.
Just how much was the total bill for food assistance?
Last year it topped out at $108.4 billion when adding in School Lunch at $12.1 billion; School Breakfast at $3.5 billion; Women Infant and Children (WIC) at $6.5 billion; and Children/Adult Care Food Program at $3 billion. Of course, food assistance in the form of food stamps garnered the largest share at $79.6 billion.
Even though many pundits claim dairy is holding up the farm bill, so too is food assistance as a tug of war ensues on spending levels.
