The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out Healthy Fluid Milk Incentives projects to develop and test methods to increase the purchase and consumption of fluid milk of SNAP households by providing incentives at the point of purchase. The Act requires biennial reporting on the status of projects and completed evaluations. The findings for the FY 2020 award were presented in the first report to Congress. This second report presents findings from the FY 2021, FY 2022 and FY 2023 pilot projects.
This data shows the percentage of TEFAP administrative funds passed through from state agencies to emergency feeding organizations in fiscal year 2022.
This study is the first nationally representative, comprehensive assessment of the school meal programs since the updated nutrition standards for school meals were phased in beginning school year 2012-2013. A study methodology report that describes the study design, sampling and data collection and a summary report that provides a brief overview of the study and key findings from the various reports are also available.
These reports fulfill the directive contained in section 749(g) of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010 (PL 111-80) for USDA to submit an annual report to Congress detailing progress in developing and testing alternative methods of providing access to food for low-income children in urban and rural areas during the summer months when schools are not in regular session.
The WIC Nutrition Services and Administration cost study examines how program funds are expended by state and local agencies to support the management and operation of WIC. The study analyzed data from a national survey of state and local agencies, cases studies, and FY 2013 WIC administrative data.
The second Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification Study (APEC II) included a follow-on report that provided statistically-derived state-level estimates of school meals erroneous payments. However, while APEC II provided a rough indicator of relative risk for groups of states (e.g., higher than average, about average, lower than average), it was not a state-representative direct measure, and creating actual annual measures of such erroneous payments at the state level using APEC methodology is cost-prohibitive. This report explores alternative approaches to developing measurement-based state-specific estimates that are responsive to year-to-year changes in the actual underlying rate in each state. It also provides cost and burden estimates for the implementation of each of these methods.
FNS developed the Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) study series, which collects and analyzes data from a nationally representative sample of schools and school food authorities (SFAs) about every 5 years. APEC allows FNS to develop a national estimate of erroneous payment rates and amounts in three key areas: certification error, meal claiming error and aggregation error. FNS recently completed APEC II, which collected data in School Year 2012-2013 and this report summarizes those findings.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act directed USDA to study the extent to which school food authorities participating in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs pay indirect costs to local education agencies. It specifically requested an assessment of the methodologies used to establish indirect costs, the types and amounts of indirect costs that are charged and not charged to the school foodservice account, and the types and amounts of indirect costs recovered by LEAs.
This study examines the cost of producing National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program meals during school year 2005-06. It measures both reported costs – costs charged directly to school food service accounts – and unreported costs – those costs paid by school districts in support of school food authority operations – to estimate the full cost of meal production.
GAO Report to Congressional Committees on Food Assistance: Performance Measures for Assessing Three WIC Services