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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Monday, June 27, 2022
Early in the pandemic, federal funding boosted efforts to get farm-fresh produce to people in need of food. Nearly a year after the Farmers to Families Food Box program ended, some participating distributors, farms, and food banks have found ways to continue reducing food waste, expanding markets and increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables for people who turn to food banks or pantries.
Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who’s one of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s newest members, is jumping into a range of farm policy issues, including pushing for as much as $20 billion a year in new conservation spending to be part of an upcoming climate and infrastructure package.
Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow tells Agri-Pulse she expects a new bipartisan version of the Growing Climate Solutions Act to be released within a few days. The funding issues have now been apparently worked out with the bill, which is aimed at laying the groundwork for ag carbon markets.
The Agriculture Department is ending the Farmers to Families Food Box program and shifting to more effective ways of delivering fresh produce and dairy products, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
President Joe Biden is releasing his fiscal 2022 budget proposal today, less than six months before the new budget year starts. His budget will only cover discretionary spending – those programs that are subject to annual appropriations, which includes research and rural development programs at USDA.
In the early days and weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand at the nation’s food banks swelled. It’s gone down and up over the year, and in many places remains higher today than the baseline before the pandemic.
Longtime Senate appropriator and GOP dealmaker Roy Blunt of Missouri is the fifth GOP senator to announce that he’s not seeking re-election. Blunt is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and former ranking Republican on the Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee that writes the annual budgets for USDA and FDA.
A new study on USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program suggests the initiative could be tweaked to better aim its benefits to small- and mid-sized farmers as well as minority- and women-owned operations.
The $900 billion COVID relief bill, passed in late December, is providing new funding for programs to help feed the millions of people whose jobs have been lost to the pandemic, but anti-hunger advocates say more help is needed and have already turned to Congress and the incoming Biden administration for help.
The Department of Agriculture will funnel another $500 million to the Farmers to Families Food Box Program and plans to issue contracts for the fourth round of the program by the end of next week.
