Congress should “substantially scale up” programs like a produce prescription and nutrition incentive program at USDA and create a food box program to provide locally grown produce to Medicaid participants, said Sen. Cory Booker on Tuesday. “Food as medicine programs can be transformative,” said the New Jersey Democrat during a Senate Agriculture subcommittee hearing on the issue.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the American Heart Association plan to launch a $250 million Food Is Medicine Research Initiative in the spring. Dr David Volpp, leader of the planning committee for the initiative, said there were promising signs for the concept. “There needs to be more robust, generalizable research that conclusively demonstrates effectiveness and value of such programs when delivered using scalable platforms,” he said.
Other witnesses at the hearing chaired by Booker described encouraging results, such as lower blood sugar levels among diabetes patients, from programs that incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets. Martin Richards of the Community Farm Alliance, of Berea, Kentucky, said the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program, known as GusNIP, should be expanded.
Booker said “food as medicine” programs could improve the diets, and health, of Americans while reducing health care costs.
“A top priority for me in the farm bill will be to increase the incentives for farmers to grow fruits and vegetables to a level that we currently support commodity crop production,” said Booker. “Our dietary guidelines tell us that 50 percent of the food that we eat should be fruits and vegetables but less than 10 percent of our farm bill subsidies currently go there.
“And so, No. 1, we must substantially scale up programs like GusNIP. No. 2, we should create a new USDA specialty crop food box program to provide locally sourced fruits and vegetables to Medicaid participants,” said the senator.
Created as part of the 2018 farm bill, GusNIP is a comparatively small USDA program. It provides grants to nonprofit organizations and government agencies to provide incentives for income-eligible consumers so they could increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables, including through the so-called produce prescription programs. Last month, the USDA awarded $59.4 million in GusNIP grants.
The CBO estimated in May that USDA would spend $5.1 billion on commodity supports in fiscal 2022 and $4.2 billion in the current fiscal year.
To watch a video of the hearing or read written testimony by witnesses, click here.