Eligible Hawaii families are set to receive increased food benefits this summer as a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new summer nutrition program for school-aged children.

Families in Hawaii will receive $177 per eligible child, a 47% increase above the per-child benefit offered to mainland families. The higher rate is, in part, a result of input from members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, who have advocated for benefit calculations that reflect the higher prices faced by neighbor island consumers.

Hawaii consistently ranks at the top for the highest cost of living, driven by high housing costs, utility prices and especially food prices due to the state’s reliance on imports for over 80% of its food supply. The high cost of food makes federal programs like the USDA’s summer nutrition initiative and the long-standing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program crucial for families struggling to make ends meet.

Yet in 2023, amid a global cost-of-living crisis, Hawaii residents saw their benefits cut due to changes in the Thrifty Food Plan, a federal guideline used to calculate SNAP benefits. The USDA reevaluated and updated the TFP to reflect more modern dietary needs and food prices.

While this change was meant to better align benefits with actual costs across the mainland United States, it didn’t fully account for Hawaii’s unique geography and inadvertently led to lower benefits for people in Hawaii.

To start, the cost of food was calculated based on Honolulu prices, which don’t accurately reflect costs across the islands.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz announced earlier this year that he worked with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to improve the cost analysis for Hawaii, and the USDA began formally gathering data to inform their rulemaking process. At the very least, this should result in an internal requirement that neighbor islands be included in benefit calculations.

U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, who represents Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District, is advocating for a more permanent fix in this year’s farm bill. Last month, the House Agriculture Committee produced its version of the farm bill, a package of legislation relating to food, agriculture and conservation that Congress has passed about every five years for the last 70 years.

In the bill, Tokuda successfully secured provisions to create separate calculations for Hawaii’s urban and rural areas, similar to Alaska’s process, which would better reflect prices in different markets across the state.

By law, Alaska and Hawaii receive a separate calculation for food costs based on their individual markets. However, the law only specifies that Alaska prices be further adjusted for rural and urban price differences. Adding the same requirement for Hawaii in law would, Tokuda said, ensure equity.

“I think something as unjust as this needs to be statutorily taken care of in law so that our neighbor islands cannot be subject to the whim of an administration to be able to put something into rules or interpret it a certain way,” Tokuda said.

“It is not reflective of our values in Hawaii if we are going to feed ourselves by starving others across the country.”

Rep. Jill Tokuda

So far, so good. Tokuda’s solution was included in the bill that passed the Agriculture Committee and is awaiting a floor vote before negotiations with the Senate begin. The broader bill, however, isn’t perfect, and it has already run into opposition, even from Tokuda herself. It proposes the largest cut to the Thrifty Food Plan in nearly 30 years.

“It was literally a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation,” Tokuda said. “It is not reflective of our values in Hawaii if we are going to feed ourselves by starving others across the country.”

While she doesn’t support the bill in totality, Tokuda said she has made it clear to both the Senate and House agriculture committee chairs that the methodology it sets out for Hawaii is “the way we achieve equity for our neighbor islands.”

Requiring both urban and rural calculations in federal law is one step toward ensuring that federal assistance programs adequately support Hawaii residents and account for the unique challenges that face our diverse and remote state.

As the farm bill moves forward, that challenge will be to achieve the necessary adjustments for Hawaii without compromising support for vulnerable populations elsewhere in the country.