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The

Man in

Manhattan

Farmer Jim Robbins, 56, sits alone in the cab of his red combine in silence, save for the occasional garbled chatter over a walkie-talkie. He farms nearly 3,000 acres, the equivalent of about 2,270 football fields of corn and soybeans.

The weatherman has assured a high of 50 today, typical for early October in Manhattan, Ill., but Robbins’s team of four thickly flannelled farm employees with coffee mugs the size of theme park soda pops knows otherwise. Today the fog will not melt away. The fields remain wet from yesterday’s rain. It’s cold.

Robbins, though, is warm inside the cab. Dressed in a pair of mud-caked work boots and a gray shirt that covers his round belly, he seems comfortable with the task of tackling this year’s harvest. And he has the U.S. government as a backup in case of harsh weather and falling crop prices, he says. Last year, he says he received $146,000 in federally supported aid — $46,000 in direct payments and $100,000 for crop insurance.

The subsidies are a product of the 80-year-old Farm Bill and help Robbins purchase new farm implements, fertilizer and other production inputs such as the combine he sits in now. The legislation, traditionally renewed every five years, deals with agriculture policy in the U.S., from green environmental efforts to the annual federal aid Robbins receives. The combine was a quarter-million-dollar investment, but Robbins was able to pay for it entirely in cash thanks to government assistance and years of consistent profit, he says. This year his aid amount is not much different.

If the payments he receives seem like good business for him, it’s because they are. But they’re good business for the economy too, he says. "When a farmer gets some money,” Robbins says, "It gets turned back into the system pretty quick.”

"We got the best system in the world."
—Jim Robbins

Millions of golden corn kernels ping pong around in the tank behind him. The larger the investment in farming, the more society benefits, he says, his voice doing little to hide his rural Midwestern roots. "If you like to eat, we contribute. If we don’t raise anything, people don’t have anything to eat,” Robbins says.

There’s a real lack of understanding about what it takes to get all of those corn and soy-based products into supermarkets, if you ask Robbins. "A lot of people, they think where they go to the grocery store, that’s where the food comes from,” he says. "That’s not where the food comes from … It originates out in the field, and somebody raised that to make that product that’s in the store.”

To most, Robbins seems like a typical recipient of Farm Bill funding. His occupation matches the bill’s title after all. What might not be as apparent, though, is that the funding farmers like him receive accounts for just 23 percent of the bill. The Farm Bill isn’t all about farms.

A legislative battle is brewing over the other 77 percent: nutrition programs. Last summer, the House of Representatives proposed and passed a $39 billion cut to the largest chunk of nutrition funding, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps. It’s a decision that is radically threatening a long-standing and unlikely union between agriculture subsidies and food aid. For decades, the bill, expected to be finalized by Congress in January, has connected farmers and SNAP recipients by one common thread: political survival.

An Unlikely Marriage

The Farm Bill grew out of an era of economic collapse. The U.S. was in the thick of the Great Depression after World War I, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the New Deal, a series of economic programs aimed at boosting and stabilizing a ruined economy. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, which would later become the Farm Bill, was one of the hallmark New Deal programs when it passed in 1933, and it provided farmers income supports.

"The rural economy was seen as an agricultural economy at that point,” says Anne Effland, a farm policy specialist with the United States Department of Agriculture. "If the farm economy is healthy, then the rural economy will be healthy, and the national economy will be healthy.”

The nutrition portion, which now accounts for $209 billion of the Farm Bill, wasn’t always a part of the legislation, though. Nutrition programs have existed since the New Deal, but rapid inflation and increased urbanization led more Americans to turn to federal nutrition assistance in the 1970s.

"If the farm economy is healthy, then the rural economy will be healthy, and the national economy will be healthy.”

At the same time, a shrinking rural population lacked enough political power to pass agricultural programs, according to Effland. Not wanting their farming constituents’ interests to go unserved, politicians from agricultural districts sought out urban political allies as a kind of safety net, and a new Farm Bill was born.

Both nutrition and agriculture policymakers needed more votes to maintain funding for their respective programs. "It was added out of survival,” says Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center, a federally funded law research and information center. "The Food Stamp lobbyists and the Farm Bill lobbyists cut a deal.”

Democrats and Republicans thought combining the two sides would be a win-win, Pittman says. After the merger, agricultural policy had enough votes to pass their subsidies, and nutrition programs had the possibility for more funding. It was nothing more than a marriage of political convenience.

It was nothing more than a marriage of political convenience.

"Historically, [the Farm Bill has] been pretty much a bipartisan affair and not that controversial, and they've been able to get through the Congress pretty well,” Pittman says.

Today, the Farm Bill still funds agricultural programs and SNAP. The most recent iteration of the bill, known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, upheld some of the same agricultural safety-net policies as its predecessors. The government seemed to pass the Farm Bill almost automatically since its inception, but now, for the first time, the Farm Bill is at a standstill. "They've gotten more and more difficult to pass, but pretty much, you can make an easy argument that this one is the most contentious,” Pittman says. At issue is $39 billion in cuts to SNAP proposed by the House of Representatives while the Senate version of the bill cuts much less.

In the 2008 Farm Bill, funding for agricultural policy composes just $60 billion of the $307 billion budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Farmers make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, compared with 21.5 percent in the 1930s, according to the USDA. But the number of SNAP recipients continues to grow. Currently, 15 percent, or nearly 47 million, of the U.S. population uses federal nutrition assistance — more than ever before.

This means an unprecedented number of SNAP recipients, who are typically represented by Democrats, have their monthly food budget tied to a much smaller, largely Republican voting bloc.

In general, Republican politicians represent more rural and suburban populations while Democrat politicians tend to represent more urban populations. This means an unprecedented number of SNAP recipients, who are typically represented by Democrats, have their monthly food budget tied to a much smaller, largely Republican voting bloc. And through Congress, Democrats also mandate funding for rural farmers. Until the two political sides compromise, the Farm Bill’s future is unclear.

The

Woman in the

Trenches

It’s mid-October, and Denise Wilson is dressed in her usual black pants, worn apron and black shoes with pink accents. She mumbles her disapproval at the unfolding scene.

Six vehicles are in line in the parking lot at the Hillside Food Pantry in Evanston, Ill., a church-run nonprofit organization that distributes bags of donated food weekly. It’s the end of the day, and tensions are running high.

A woman is standing outside of her car trying to monitor what groceries she will receive. She is blatantly disobeying a sign that instructs patrons to remain in their cars while groceries are hand-delivered into their trunks and back seats.

"We don’t have to do this,” Wilson says, in between loading groceries, her long dreadlocks swishing across her back. Some of the other volunteers nod in agreement as Wilson continues, exasperated and mildly offended by the woman’s decision to ignore pantry protocol."We do this out of the kindness of our hearts,” she says lightly.

Wilson volunteers nearly every day at the pantry, two to three hours a day, as she has for the last three years. She unloads food delivery trucks and bags and hands out groceries. When it comes to keeping the line moving, Wilson is no-nonsense. And although she sometimes voices her frustrations aloud, few would truly be offended by her words.

Everyone at Hillside, volunteers and patrons alike, know Wilson. She calls most families by name and has a friendly rapport with the other volunteers. Wilson is a hugger and is quick to kiss any baby in a back seat. Few know, though, that Wilson was once an active pantry user herself and is currently one of nearly 47 million people in the U.S. who receive government food assistance through SNAP.

Wilson has needed the assistance off and on for most of her life. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Wilson says she remembers using food stamps growing up. She now lives with her husband and four children in a small apartment in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the city’s North Side.

"I always have to have food in this house no matter what.”
—Denise Wilson

When Wilson and her own family first started using government food assistance about two decades ago, she received an average of $800 per month, she says. As her children grew older, she started working part-time as a lunchroom attendant, and the extra $200 a month she earned reduced her SNAP funding to an average of $400. This was one of the reasons she began using the food pantry in 2010, she says. Her government assistance was not enough to cover the $800 monthly cost to feed herself, her husband and her children. "There’s never enough to get by,” she says. "I’m not sure what they are basing it on, whether it’s yearly or monthly or… All I know is that it’s not enough to feed a family of six.”

Of Wilson’s four children, who range in age from 14 to 25, three have special needs, making full-time work a near impossibility. "I wouldn't need [SNAP benefits] if I was able to go back to work,” she says. "If I had the choice to go to work — oh baby, I would be gone in a heartbeat.”

But Wilson can’t always rely on SNAP. The amounts fluctuate each time she starts a new part-time job, and she says the eligibility process makes it unstable. "Maybe I made $5 more, they’ll cut me $100 off,” she says. "I don’t really want to depend on it like everybody else does because [the government] can just turn me off any time.”

At Hillside, Wilson walks back and forth between the cars and the pale yellow shed that serves as a pantry. Industrial metal shelves, fully stocked with boxed and canned goods, fill the storage area inside. A conveyer belt helps the 10 or so volunteers package the food in brown paper bags, ready for Wilson to take out to a car.

Maiya Lueptow, whose colorful earrings match her gregarious personality, is the Hillside Pantry’s director and has watched Wilson take on more hours and more responsibility — but less food. "This is the thing. I know Denise struggles more than she will admit, and she's not alone in this,” Lueptow says. "Sometimes it's about the dignity of the person. So there are times when if Denise says she doesn't need anything, I'm like, alright, I know you'll let me know if there's something else I can do — even though I know that she's not going to.”

Wilson will sometimes let her guard down and sandwich a rare statement of honest reflection among a smattering of rhetorical questions and a laugh. "Be grateful,” she says. "Because what you have today may not be there tomorrow.”

"It's about respect."
—Denise Wilson

After a pause, she quickly changes the subject to something she can control — her actions. While Wilson is unable to get a full-time job right now or foresee the future of her SNAP benefits, she does contribute the little personal time she has to putting her gratitude and frustration into something constructive: handing out food to struggling families like her own. "I’m seeing people with fear... I was on that side, too,” she says. "I just thought I would be more useful on the other side ... Most of the people tell me their stories. I'm like, really? I have the same problems you have. ” As for the proposed federal cuts, Wilson is resigned to her fate. "I'm not crying over it. If it's going to happen, ain’t nothing we can do to stop it.”

An Unsatisfied Partner

What began as a marriage to protect both farmers and low-income communities has become a bill pitted against itself. Those who rely on federal nutrition assistance are in a far more vulnerable place than those on the agriculture side of the bill, Pittman says, an agriculture law expert. In a political environment where some politicians are trying to drastically cut the budget, SNAP recipients have the most at stake.

Currently, the House is proposing a $51.9 billion total cut to the bill over 10 years. The Senate, on the other hand, is proposing a $17.9 billion total cut over the same period. For agricultural programs, the proposals are nearly identical. The House proposed a $12.9 billion cut and the Senate, a $13.9 billion cut, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Spending cuts to the nutrition program, however, are the main difference between the two proposals. The Republican-run House passed a $39 billion cut while the Democrat-run Senate passed a cut of $3.9 billion.

"Any cuts to monthly benefits will have a significant impact on how much food a family can afford and how they will make ends meet.”

The House’s proposal makes an already tough year worse for SNAP recipients. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which boosted social program funding during the recession, increased SNAP maximum monthly benefits by 13.6 percent. This November, though, the nutrition component of the act expired, reducing SNAP funding by nearly $5 billion in fiscal year 2014, according to the U.S. Center of Budget and Policy Priorities.

The return to previous funding levels means families saw an average SNAP reduction of 7 percent. A four-person household, for instance, saw their monthly assistance amount reduced by $36, while a one-person household saw a funding reduction of $11. The November changes may appear slight, but the decrease hit the country's most vulnerable. The average SNAP recipient's gross monthly income is currently $744, according to the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service Annual Program Data.

"SNAP is one of the most effective anti-poverty programs we have,” says Helly Lee, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, an advocacy group for policies impacting low-income families. "[The program] responds by expanding to meet the needs of families in economic downturns, and when the economy recovers, it contracts.”

"SNAP is one of the most effective anti-poverty programs we have."

Even with an improving economy, families are still affected, Lee says. "SNAP benefits are already very low — benefits average $1.50 per person per meal. Any cuts to monthly benefits will have a significant impact on how much food a family can afford and how they will make ends meet.”

Not everybody sees the cuts as a bad thing, though. For some, the SNAP reductions just scratch the surface.

The

Lone

Farmer

"Go up a little bit,” Dave Kestel, 51, shouts over the clamoring of his tractor’s engine.

"Huh?!” responds his 82-year-old father, Tony Kestel, who’s losing his hearing.

"Shut that tractor off! You got it in park!” yells Dave Kestel, his tanned, muscular frame partially hidden by the second story window out of which he’s now leaning. The pair is working to align a bright yellow auger — a long, hollow tube used to transfer grain – with an old, red storage barn.

"Ho! That’s good! We’re done!” Kestel shouts, as his father successfully guides the massive arm into the building’s second story.

With his father aging, Dave Kestel’s nearly 1,400-acre farm in Manhattan, Ill., has become a mostly one-man operation. "I’m the CEO, and I’m also the guy who sweeps the floors,” Kestel says. "I love it.”

Given his can-do attitude, it’s not surprising Kestel would embrace the challenge of running a farm by himself. He’s got an old school streak in him, and the few thousand dollars he gets annually in direct payments and crop insurance from the Farm Bill, he could take or leave. "Our input costs have gotten staggeringly high,” Kestel says. "So $8,000 [in subsidies], I mean, yeah, okay, it’s nice. But in the grand scheme of things, it don’t amount to squat.”

And while the current House and Senate Farm Bill proposals would cut into Dave’s subsidies slightly, he’s not sure he’d want more even if he could get it. "I’m not a big fan of the government right now anyways,” Kestel says.

Kestel’s disdain for the Farm Bill isn’t limited to the agricultural aspects, though. He also believes nutrition programs such as SNAP are problematic. "There are some people who truly deserve [food stamps] for whatever issue is unfortunate in their life,” he says. "But there’s a lot of people getting food stamps who don’t deserve them either.”

"They're thinking fat, straw hat, beard.”
—Dave Kestel

Driven by this kind of conservative sentiment, the House passed the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act of 2013 in September to crack down on "waste, fraud, and abuse within [SNAP] to ensure that those who truly need the benefits are able to receive them.”

But federal assistance abuse is just one small component of a larger problem for many conservatives. They believe as the economy improves, there should be a reduced need for recession-era funding levels. One of the House’s main priorities is reducing the federal deficit, and cutting billions from the Farm Bill over the course of 10 years is only a small step toward its larger goal.

For both the House and the Senate, deficit reduction is paramount. A joint committee said "achieving at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction savings” is a top priority, according to the 2011 National Conference of State Legislatures Deficit Reduction Priorities Letter.

"They know every move we make.”
—Dave Kestel

Kestel’s answer to the problem?

"I think they should separate it,” he says. "Don’t make it part of the Farm Bill. Call it the Food Stamp program.”

An Unstable Union

Kestel’s idea isn’t far-fetched. For the first time since the 1977 marriage, some political factions are proposing a divorce between nutrition and agricultural policy.

While politicians stall the bill, the nutrition program continues to receive funding because it is permanent legislation. For agricultural programs, however, government subsidies and crop insurance subsidies are not permanent legislation and were not covered once the bill expired in September.

The House passed the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act in July 2013, which would separate agricultural and nutrition programs. "This is really the first concerted effort to separate food stamps from the Farm Bill,” Effland says. "It’s never happened. It’s an interesting point in time to watch to see how critical politically it is to both of these parts to be combined into one bill.”

For the House, attempting to split the bill is the first move in an effort to further cut nutrition assistance programs.

For the House, attempting to split the bill is the first move in an effort to further cut nutrition assistance programs. Many conservatives believe such programs are better supported through churches and donations, not the federal government, Pittman says. "There’s a clear intent to split [the bill] out, you know, and conquer and divide.”

The House’s proposed Nutrition Reform Act includes a number of cost-cutting measures.It would prevent the USDA and U.S. from advertising or promoting SNAP; implement an income test for SNAP recipients; reduce "waste, fraud and abuse” by ending benefits for lottery winners and college students; and increase oversight of nutrition programs for the homeless, elderly, and disabled.

For the most part, the Republican-led House is in the farmer’s corner, but while they fight to defund nutrition programs, they are faced with not just a strong Democrat opposition in the Senate but also a waning agricultural voting bloc.

Something has to give. The relationship between the two is imperfect, but it’s necessary in order to protect the interests of both sides.

The Republican proposal perhaps doesn’t recognize the potential implications to farmers if the bill is split. Without a joint bill, the agricultural community would likely face increased scrutiny and decreased subsidies similar to the nutrition community. "Agriculture is in a weakened political state relative to where it used to be,” Pittman says. "To split that out would be like being in a hot air balloon, and someone shot it with a cannon. You're going to start losing air and going towards the ground, and hopefully you don't die when you hit the bottom.”

Something has to give. The relationship between the two is imperfect, Pittman says, but it’s necessary in order to protect the interests of both sides.

The

Momon a

Mission

It’s almost dinner time, and Stephanie Stas sits alone in a row of rusted metal chairs in a waiting area at the Hillside Food Pantry in Evanston. She holds a small, deli-style ticket between her fingers. Someone will call her number soon.

"Number fifty-seven,” a woman’s voice says over the loudspeakers.

"That’s me,” Stas says.

"Fifty-seven,” the voice repeats.

"I’m coming,” Stas says, a few decibels louder than before, as she heads over to the registration table.

The 49-year-old single mother is completing her Wednesday night routine, picking up bags of food to feed herself, her mother and her youngest daughter.

Stas uses pantries like Hillside to supplement the "$22 and change” she receives in nutrition assistance each month. This amount was recently slashed from the $130 a month she started receiving six years ago when her youngest daughter was born."It was a shocker to see my SNAP go down,” Stas says.

In addition to her food assistance, she relies on Social Security Income for disability because of hip and foot injuries. Her daughter also receives Social Security survivor benefits because her father is deceased.

Stas gets her food ticket, a receipt that states her family size, and drives her 2005 silver Saturn Vue to the pick-up line to receive her groceries. Hillside is just one of the stops she will make tonight. She, along with her 6-year-old, Colette, and a friend will take an hour-long, 24-mile drive to Willow Creek Care Center, a pantry in Barrington, Ill., which closes its doors at 7:30 p.m.

Stas just read a flyer that explains November’s SNAP cuts. "That’s why I’m making extra trips today,” she says. "And I have no gas. I’m actually robbing my kid’s piggy bank to get out there.”

A pair of sunglasses holds back Stas’s wavy hair. She wears rectangular-shaped eyeglasses and another pair of glasses hangs from her sun visor, all of which she interchanges as she drives home to drop off her first round of groceries.

"Food is expensive.”
—Stephanie Stas

At just around 5 p.m., she arrives at her mother’s two-story house in Skokie, Ill., where Stas lives and pays rent. The suburban neighborhood doesn’t fit the profile of a person struggling with food insecurity."No, you don’t think about it in this area at all. No way,” Stas says. "And there are beautiful homes here. Who would think anyone’s having a problem? … And at first, sure I cried at food pantries. Not anymore.”

Paul Morello, public relations coordinator at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which distributes food to pantries across Cook County, says there is no typical family that needs assistance. "Increasingly we are seeing people who have jobs coming to food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters,” he says. "People who maybe have two jobs or three jobs, people who are married and have children, who have maybe been laid off or have had to stop working because they’ve gone on disability.”

Food insecurity is widespread. There are 860,000 people in the Chicago area alone who are food insecure. That’s one out of six people — a staggering statistic, Morello says. "People are unsure where they’re going to eat, and any cut to the SNAP program, to the federal nutrition safety net, is going to impact that.”

Food aid organizations are not prepared for any large reductions to the government’s food program, Morello says. "SNAP is the first line of defense against hunger for many people. That federal nutrition safety net is critical to so many individuals being able to feed their families. If that net is cut, if SNAP is cut at all, there will not be enough private resources to fill that gap.”

Stas, who works from home as an independent contractor for a marketing company, eats a chicken salad croissant on her way to the gas station in preparation for her trip. She uses $5 in change to put money in her empty tank and holds up the gas hose to get every last drop.

"There’s still gas in the hose after you fill up, and it drops back so I open up the nozzle, and I let it flow into my car,” she says, adding a chuckle. "Otherwise the next person will get it, and it’s mine because I paid for it.”

Stas uses four different pantries total. She hasn’t visited the pantry in Skokie in a while. "So three right now,” she says. She goes to the Robert Crown Center, also in Evanston, the second Tuesday of each month. "But they have cut back on what they offer,” she says. "Maybe two bags full, when it used to be a whole cart full.”

After a cigarette break, Stas finally leaves for Barrington at about half past five. "Barrington gives you an extreme amount of food, a whole cart full, approximately six to eight meats, dairy products. It’s a massive amount that can set me for the whole month. So it definitely balances out,” she says. "And when I miss it, it hurts.”

"I just don't want to get locked out.”
—Stephanie Stas

Just before 6:30 p.m., the parking lot at the Care Center, a more than 60,000-square-foot modern building with large glass windows displaying the crowd inside, is packed.

"Look how big it is. All these people are here for food,” Stas says, looking for an empty parking space. "I just want to get in so I don’t get locked out.” If there are too many people, the Center will close its doors early. Stas loops around to the far east end of the lot and pulls into the first open spot she sees. With her daughter at her side, she hurries to the front entrance. She looks relieved as she signs in.

While waiting to pick up her food, she starts talking to Josie Guth, the director of the Care Center. Guth holds a walkie-talkie and looks tired.

"So let me ask you this question. I am familiar with all of the different food pantries in the area. Why are you traveling?” Guth asks bluntly. "Because clearly you passed probably four pantries to get here.”

Stas told her she comes for the quality food, the discount children’s clothes shop and the comfortable environment.

"It’s worth the drive to you?” Guth asks.

"Absolutely worth the drive,” Stas says.

Stas’s lengthy drive is not unique. More than 220 families commute hours from the South Side of Chicago to get to the center, Guth says.

Guth is concerned because more and more families are coming to the center from outside of Barrington, and they’re having to turn people away. Even though unemployment rates are lowering and people are getting jobs, the number of patrons has increased, Guth says. "We’re open 11 shifts throughout the week, and every single shift is packed like this. We serve over 5,000 families a month.”

Stas tells Guth her SNAP benefits have been cut.

"You have $20 a month? Wow,” Guth says. "Thank God that there’s pantries out there that are making up for it.”

Stas changes the subject, telling Guth there is a chance her mother might sell her house. "If I have to go to a shelter, I will, but I don’t want to. I’ll go to the YMCA and maybe live with a friend or something.”

"Big choices,” Guth says.

"As an adult, yeah. I never pictured myself in this situation. It’s scary,” Stas says.

After picking out groceries and discount childrens clothes, she loads the car and hands her daughter a cup of sweet pickles and a yogurt. It’s after 9 p.m., and before Stas heads home, she has to stop again for gas. "Let’s see, I put $4, $5 there, $4.50, $9 in gas to go,” she says, doing the math aloud. "Which wasn’t too bad, but I’m still on ‘E,’” she says, letting out a fiery laugh that quickly dwindles.

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