Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 2/14/18

Leaders from the nation's network of food banks, which provide some 4 billion meals to people in need each year, were stunned to see USDA propose a wholesale revamp of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program this week without so much as a heads-up. 

Anti-hunger groups fully expected the Trump administration's fiscal 2019 budget would propose monetary cuts to SNAP, as well as a call for stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents (and it did both). But the idea that half of the SNAP benefits for 16 million households would also be converted to a massive new program to dole out something called "America's Harvest Box" was another level of distressing -- in part because the distribution of such goods would likely fall on them.

"I am the biggest fan of food banks ... but charity cannot take this on," said Kate Maehr, CEO of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, who was in Washington this week for a Feeding America board meeting. For every one meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides 12, she said. 

Food banks know something about boxes: The fact that food banks were not consulted by USDA was stunning to them - especially because they are already involved in a similar food-assistance program on a smaller scale.

Administration officials said the program was modeled after the the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides boxes of shelf-stable food to about 600,000 low-income seniors citizens. USDA sends these goods to food banks and other nonprofits who then sort it, pack it in boxes and figure out how to distribute the packages to seniors in need. (The distribution costs are partly covered by USDA, partly covered by private donations.) The process sometimes involves dropping the boxes off at a low-income senior housing or other places where recipients can pick up the boxes.

Turns out, canned food is heavy: Vermont Foodbank CEO John Sayles said his organization had already looked into whether it could ship the CSFP food boxes to seniors, but it simply is not feasible, in part because the boxes weigh a lot.

"We've looked into using UPS, FedEx and mailing, and the cost is astronomical," Sayles said. The boxes for one senior's monthly allotment clock in at about 20-30 pounds. Shipping shelf-stable milk, canned fruits and meats and bags of beans would get even more expensive for any program that served a household with several family members, he noted. 

Vilsack has lots of questions: Former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was also in town for the Feeding America board meeting, sharply questioned USDA's ability to implement such a distribution system. 

"I'm not sure the logistics of this idea have been well thought out," Vilsack said, before launching into all the unknowns, like: Who would decide what goes into the boxes? Would rural Americans have to drive long distances to pick them up? 
"The federal government is not Amazon," Vilsack added. "It's not Blue Apron."

USDA sticks to its guns: "One of the favorite pastimes in Washington is to criticize new ideas and say they won't work," said a department spokesperson, asked to respond to the backlash.

"CSFP has proven to be a very popular program and this proposal builds on it," the spokesperson added. "We understand that change and innovation require listening and engagement, and the inclusion of America's Harvest Boxes in the budget proposal begins that process."

"Let them eat shelf-stable milk:" In case you missed it, the Twitterverse had quite a few things to say about the food-in-a-box idea, slamming it as mean-spirited, hypocritical and even a little communist.