Items Tagged with 'CFAP'

The top Republican on the Senate Ag Committee wants the Department of Agriculture to show how it spent $11 billion in funding designed to help producers weather the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill have spent the past couple of years working to rein in the market power of the four largest beef packers. But time may well have run out on two major reform bills.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has selected a veteran economist with the Agriculture Department and the dairy industry to lead the organization's economic analysis unit.

USDA announced Wednesday plans to spend at least $6 billion on new pandemic aid programs that reach a broader swath of producers than previous efforts, while putting “a greater emphasis on outreach to small and socially disadvantaged producers, specialty crop and organic producers (and) timber harvesters.”

On Tuesday, Vilsack took part in a wide-ranging interview with Agri-Pulse from his home in Iowa, touching on subjects ranging from helping farmers through the COVID-19 pandemic to addressing the “cumulative effect of discrimination over a long period of time.”

An Agri-Pulse analysis shows that the Trump administration's Coronavirus Food Assistance Program payments were distributed more widely than traditional forms of government assistance although larger farms continue to receive the big share of the money.

Tom Vilsack is sworn in for his second stint as agriculture secretary, and the Agriculture Department provides new guidance on its review and planned implementation of additional coronavirus relief. 

The Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Vilsack as the nation’s Secretary of Agriculture, giving the former Iowa governor another term at the helm of USDA.

Farm earnings are broadly expected to ease this year, although USDA's latest farm income forecast projects skyrocketing prices for key commodities will help offset a steep drop in government payments and increases in production costs.