Major farm groups are working to ensure that a new coronavirus relief package provides more specific directions to the Agriculture Department on how to distribute $20 billion in additional relief.

A key senator involved in developing the Republican coronavirus relief package for farmers defended the broad authority it gives to USDA to spend $20 billion in farm aid, but he said the Trump administration likely will need to provide assurances about how the money will be spent.

The Democratic Party’s draft 2020 platform calls for directing more farm subsidies to small and medium-size farms while making the agriculture sector the first in the first world to eliminate net carbon emissions.

Talks on a coronavirus relief package will heat up this week as Senate Republicans prepare to bring out their proposal this week with an eye toward getting the massive legislation passed ahead of the August recess. 

Participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are now getting emergency benefit increases totaling $2 billion a month nationwide that Congress authorized to address the unemployment surge and economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis. 

President Donald Trump signs into law a $2 trillion economic stimulus package that includes $23.5 billion in aid to farmers and ranchers as well as marketing loan relief.

Congressional leaders have reached agreement on a $2 trillion economic rescue package that would replenish the Agriculture Department’s Commodity Credit Corp. authority and earmark additional money for livestock and specialty crop producers as well as local agriculture.

President Donald Trump signed into law a COVID-19 relief package that expands domestic feeding programs and suspends the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s work requirements during the crisis.

A meeting of the government’s dietary guidelines advisers has been moved online and schools are being offered flexibility in feeding low-income kids as the Agriculture Department tries to grapple with the coronavirus outbreak.