02/09/03
ALEX PULASKI

Washington and Michigan asparagus growers, undercut by cheap and plentiful imports from Peru, turned to Congress last winter for help.
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Eleven House members obliged, and at their urging the federal government announced last May that it would purchase 6.1 million pounds of canned and frozen asparagus for $5 million.

The same Depression-era program that rescued asparagus growers has also proved to be a godsend to America's poor and hungry. Nearly three-quarters of the federal government's "bonus buys" end up in the hands of food banks; the rest goes into school lunches and other nutrition programs for children.

But movement of bonus-buy commodities has slowed dramatically in recent months, paralyzed by federal funds being diverted to help ranchers.

That's left the Oregon Food Bank and more than 300 community food pantries it serves struggling to meet swelling demand. The U.S. Agriculture Department bonus shipments to Oregon -- home to the highest rates of hunger and unemployment in the nation -- have shrunk by nearly 60 percent from a year ago.

The bonus buys, which have averaged $176 million nationally the past five years, constitute a little-known but increasingly important component of the federal emergency-food program. Bonus buys make up nearly half of the 8.6 million pounds in federal food shipments the Oregon Food Bank expects this year.

The food bank's share of federal food peaked last year at 12.5 million pounds, more than triple the totals from two years before. By that standard, this year's supply might be considered adequate. But food providers say Oregon's faltering economy and 7 percent unemployment have inundated them.

"We used to serve people in walkers, people who couldn't compete economically," said Judy Alley, executive director of SnowCap Community Charities in Gresham. "Now we have unemployed engineers, healthy men with two arms and two legs, people who are used to having a job. That's what is different now."

Six months ago, the food bags clients carried from SnowCap's food pantry weighed 72 pounds. Now, because federal bonus buys have slowed, food bags go out 20 percent lighter at 58 pounds.

Bags would have weighed even less if the Oregon Food Bank had not consumed a half-million pounds of its inventory to cushion the blow to emergency food providers.

"We're getting some of the same items, but not nearly the same quantity," said Jim Arnold, inventory control manager at Fish Emergency Service in Portland. "It's dropped off drastically since June."

The reason for the slowdown is that the Agriculture Department, in an unprecedented move, is using the federal funds that pay for bonus buys and related programs to provide drought relief to cattle, lamb and buffalo producers.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman says the bonus-buy funding -- planned to be at $200 million this year -- will be restored. It's up to Congress and the Bush administration, however, to decide when and for how much.

The Senate voted last month to restore the bonus-buy funding as part of an overall spending package. House and Senate members are expected to iron out spending differences this month and send a package to President Bush.

"We're still concerned about what the House is going to do," said Doug O'Brien, vice president of public policy and research for America's Second Harvest. The nonprofit, based in Chicago, is the nation's largest hunger relief organization and includes a network of more than 200 food providers.

Even if Congress acts quickly, food orders often lag months behind. The Oregon Food Bank doesn't see relief in sight.

"At this point, it's going out faster than it's coming in," said Rachel Bristol, the food bank's executive director.

Bonus buys have existed since the Agriculture Act of 1935 was passed. The act set aside 30 percent of U.S. Customs receipts -- the tariffs charged on imported goods -- to pay for child and family nutrition programs.

The bulk of the money, about $5.2 billion annually, pays for school lunch and breakfast programs.

Each year, the Agriculture Department is allowed to use a portion of uncommitted funds from the customs receipts to pay for bonus buys. The buys are designed to raise market prices and reduce surplus demand, benefiting farmers and commercial fisheries.

Farmers and trade organizations can press the agriculture secretary directly for such aid. Or, as they did with asparagus, growers can ask Congress to intervene.

Federal correspondence over the past five years shows how growers and fisheries in the Northwest and across the country have appealed for help.

Northwest associations or their representatives in Congress have requested Agriculture Department bonus buys 10 times during those five years.

Besides asparagus, commodities included apples, cranberries, potatoes, grape juice, raspberry puree, pears and tuna.

"Secretary Glickman, tuna fishermen have been dealt a serious blow by the Asian financial crisis," U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman in September 1998. "The surplus albacore amounts to over 50 million tuna sandwiches.

"Delivering this harvest to American citizens . . . instead of allowing it to be dumped on an already saturated market, or dumped overboard, makes economic and practical sense."

Wyden wrote Glickman twice more in the ensuing two weeks and was joined by U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., as well as U.S. senators from Washington and California.

On Oct. 16, a Glickman aide wrote the senators back to say that the department would buy $4 million of albacore.

In April last year, Wyden, Smith and other senators wrote Veneman to urge her to buy cranberries. Oregon produces about 7 percent of the national cranberry crop.

In 2001, after two years of prodding by Congress and trade groups, the Agriculture Department purchased 73 million pounds of cranberry products, at a cost of $43.4 million.

Another $19.3 million in bonus-buy cranberry purchases followed last year.

Because the bonus buys are intended to benefit producers, the Agriculture Department often finds itself with commodities on its hands that consumers aren't crazy about. That's especially true for schools, who get first crack at bonus-buy commodities.

"If World War III was fought with canned salmon," food service company representative Bruce Norman testified at a national school lunch hearing last October, "we would win easily."

The challenge of marketing 13 million pounds of canned salmon, 4 million pounds of walnuts or 16 million pounds of canned apricots has led the Agriculture Department to experiment. The department began running taste tests with schoolchildren in 2000, offering items such as burgers and pizza made with dried plum puree, a fig-based barbecue dipping sauce and asparagus guacamole.

In a large sense, what school kids won't eat becomes staples in the country's food programs for the hungry.

"I figured out a long time ago that they don't do this for the poor, because of what they choose to give us," said Alley of the SnowCap program. "But we need it, and without it there'd be a lot of children who would not have dinner night after night." Researcher Lovelle Svart of The Oregonian contributed to this report. Alex Pulaski: 503-221-8516; alexpulaski@news.oregonian.com