Page 71 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

The coalition would pay off in a big way for both farm and anti-hunger groups when successive
farm bills in 2002 and 2008 would expand food-stamp eligibility and attract the Democratic
support needed to pass agricultural programs.

“It’s worked,” former Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan., says of the farm-nutrition coalition that he
helped forge for the first time in the 1973 farm bill. “People have benefited from the food
program, people who needed it … and farmers, and not all farmers are rich, have benefited from
the farm programs.”

The history of food stamps and the farm bill provides several lessons:

• The combination of the two has led to expansions, and averted cuts, in nutrition
assistance that likely wouldn’t have been achieved otherwise;

• Having food stamps in the farm bill has created a place for creating or showing
significant overall savings in farm bill spending, not just when the program is cut but also
when a strong economy is reducing enrollment;

• The Senate and House Agriculture committees in charge of food stamps ensures that farm
groups have a stake in how the program operates. A series of House Agriculture
Committee hearings over the past two years focused attention not only on the program’s
broad support but also on a number of innovative efforts to improve the lives of
recipients.
• And, yes, the combination has generated votes for both farm and nutrition programs that
might otherwise not have been there.

But even as the cost of the SNAP program is once again on the decline (see chart below), the
farm-nutrition coalition is about to be tested again.

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