For this historic Bill signing of Act 155 Governor Josh Green was joined by many stakeholders who helped support this legislation, including Senator Joy San Buenaventura, Chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services; Hawaii Farm Bureau Executive Director Brian Miyamoto; Senate President Ronald Kouchi; First Lady of Hawaii Jaime Green; HFIA Executive Director Lauren Zirbel and Director of Operations Alexis Chapman. Photo Courtesy of the Office of Governor Green.
Legislative Update
By Lauren Zirbel
Photos by Charlene Iboshi Courtesy of the Hawaii Food Basket.
Lauren Zirbel and several HFIA Members were able to join our friends at the Hawaii Food Basket for the DA BUX Mahalo event this July celebrating the future of this amazing program.
Rep. Greggor Illagan; HFIA Vice Chair Kit Okimoto of Okimoto Corp; HFIA Executive Director Lauren Zirbel; Rep. Kirstin Kahaloa; Good Food Alliance Project Director Saleh Azizi; Hawaii Farm Bureau Executive Director Brian Miyamoto; Department of Ag Chair Sharon Hurd; Rep Richard Onishi.
HFIA Members Steve Ueda from Suisan, Kit Okimoto of Okimoto Corp., Lauren Zirbel, and Toby Taniguchi of KTA.
Rep Illagan, Lauren, and Kit celebrating fresh local food!
HFIA is pleased to report that top priority bills that we proactively advocated for this session have been signed into law.
Summer EBT, SUN Bucks
HB2430 was signed into law July 1st as Act 155. This creates the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children Program and appropriates $2 million in state funds to cover half the administrative costs of the program. With that investment, the program will pull in another $2 million in Federal funding to cover the rest of the administrative costs and up to $18 million in Federal funds to cover the program benefits.
Days after the bill was signed it was announced that the SUN Bucks Program is accepting applications. The program provides $177 per child per month for qualifying families during the months when school lunches are not available. Many kids who rely on school lunch as an important part of their daily nutrition and in the summer when these lunches are not available families have a hard time stretching their food budgets. This program will provide vital assistance to help alleviate food insecurity for Hawaii keiki in the summer. It also injects much needed Federal funds into our food systems which will continue to circulate and have positive economic impacts.
HFIA was very proud to support this measure throughout session and join Governor Green and other stakeholders for the bill signing.
DA BUX Receives Long Term Funding
For many years DA BUX has been a vital program to support local farmers and provide local Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) users with access to more healthy fresh food. The program doubles the purchasing power for SNAP users when buying local produce. Because the program is primarily funded with Federal grants and other matching programs it also has an important economic multiplier effect and pulls money into Hawaii’s food systems.
This year, in order to secure the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) grant that is vital to the continued operation of the program it was necessary to show a stable funding source for the State’s share of the program. HFIA, Ulupono Initiative, and range of other stakeholders advocated throughout session for funding for this great program.
We’re pleased to report that funding has been included as a line item in the budget, which will ensure the long term continuation of DA BUX and its many benefits.
Hawaiʻi Food Price Data for the USDA
Currently, food price data used by the Federal government is based on retail grocery prices in stores on Oahu, mostly in the metro Honolulu area. Due to Hawaiʻi’s island geography, population distribution, and other uncontrollable factors prices of food can vary widely and be substantially more in some areas of the other three counties, and even on Oahu outside metro Honolulu. Due to this limited data usage, the Federal government had an incomplete picture of our state’s food prices. Because this data is used to calculate things like allotments for users of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program this incomplete data could have resulted in decreased SNAP allotments, and negative impacts for food security and our food systems in Hawaii.
In January of this year the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a request for information (RFI) related to food price data in Hawaiʻi. Per the RFI,
“The USDA Food and Nutrition Service requests comments from the public—including the food industry and research community—to help inform future policy and decisions about potentially updating Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) cost estimates for the State of Hawaii.
Specifically, FNS invites comments and ideas about food price data for the State of Hawaii—including communities in the state outside of the County of Honolulu—that may be available, potentially accessible to FNS, and of sufficient quality, format, sample size, and recent period to be used potentially by FNS to make cost adjustments for the State of Hawaii to the TFP pursuant to section 3(u)(2) of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, as amended.”
HFIA responded to the RFI and encouraged members to participate. We are pleased to announce a proposed rule change that would consider the food price data for the entire state. “The proposed rule would update the price-of-food adjustment used to calculate the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) for Hawaii in 7 CFR 273.10(e)(4) from an adjustment for the price of food in Honolulu to an adjustment for the price of food in the State of Hawaii. The proposed revisions would better align with the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (7 U.S.C. 2012(u)), which calls for the TFP to be adjusted for the cost of food in Hawaii and would enable the Department to use data that better reflects food prices throughout the State of Hawaii rather than data from Honolulu alone.”
We believe this new rule will be enacted and will mean that in future the TFP will better reflect what Hawaiʻi families are actually paying for food. This will also help ensure that allotments for SNAP users in Hawaiʻi are more equitable compared to users in other parts of the country.