Courtesy of NAA:
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced additional aid to agricultural producers and businesses as part of the USDA Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative.
Implementation of the assistance announced today will continue within 60 days to include support to timber harvesters, biofuels, dairy farmers and processors, livestock farmers and contract growers of poultry, assistance for organic cost share, and grants for PPE.
In March, USDA announced $6 billion (see Part 1) in available funds through Pandemic Assistance to support a number of new programs or to modify existing efforts. The following programming is planned for implementation within 60 days, which will continue to be focused on filling gaps in previous rounds of assistance and helping beginning, socially disadvantaged and small and medium sized producers that need support most:
- $200 million: Small, family-owned timber harvesting and hauling businesses
- $700 million: Biofuels producers
- Support for dairy farmers and processors:
- $400 million: The new Dairy Donation Program to address food insecurity and mitigate food waste and loss
- Additional pandemic payments targeted to dairy farmers that have demonstrated losses that have not been covered by previous pandemic assistance
- Approximately $580 million: Supplemental Dairy Margin Coverage for small and medium farms
- Assistance for poultry and livestock producers left out of previous rounds of pandemic assistance:
- Contract growers of poultry
- Livestock and poultry producers forced to euthanize animals during the pandemic (March 1, 2020 through December 26, 2020)
- $700 million: Pandemic Response and Safety Grants for PPE and other protective measures to help specialty crop growers, meat packers and processors, seafood industry workers, among others
- Up to $20 million: Additional organic cost share assistance, including for producers who are transitioning to organic
Click here for the press release.
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