In United States agricultural law, Commodity Assistance Program is term used by appropriators to refer to a variety of domestic programs receiving food in the form of USDA supplied commodities. The term was formalized for the first time in FY1996 appropriations law (P.L. 104-37, October 21, 1995) to refer to the consolidation for funding purposes of three

commodity donation program In economics, a commodity is an economic goods, good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the Market (economics), market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to w ...

s that are authorized under two separate statutes: the

Emergency Food Assistance Program An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

(EFAP),

Soup Kitchen-Food Bank Program The Soup Kitchen-Food Bank Program was originally authorized under the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988 to buy commodities for soup kitchens and food banks not participating in the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP). This program was consol ...

, and the

Commodity Supplemental Food Program The Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) provides supplementary United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food packages to the low-income elderly of at least 60 years of age. It is one of the fifteen federally-funded nutrition assis ...

(CSFP). Entitlement commodities are food commodities purchased by the

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commerc ...

for the purpose of meeting legislatively specified rates of commodity assistance for various food assistance programs (e.g., school lunches). These commodities may be in government holdings as a result of agricultural surplus removal or

price support In economics, a price support may be either a subsidy, a production quota, or a price floor, each with the intended effect of keeping the market price of a good higher than the competitive equilibrium level. In the case of a price control, a pri ...

activities carried out under a variety of agriculture laws, but more commonly they are items purchased to meet food program needs.

References

*{{CRS, article = Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition, url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110810044532/http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/05jun/97-905.pdf, author= Jasper Womach United States Department of Agriculture programs

See also

References