Items Tagged with 'CCC'

The top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee accused the Biden administration on Tuesday of keeping lawmakers in the dark on plans for a new $1 billion climate program.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack assures lawmakers the Biden administration is holding China to account for its failure to fulfill “phase one” trade commitments, but he stopped short of saying what steps the administration would take.

The Department of Agriculture is distributing $1.5 billion to the nation’s school meal program operators to help them deal with supply chain challenges that are driving up costs.

Successive presidents have ramped up use of a Depression-era tool, USDA's Commodity Credit Corp., to pour billions of dollars into their policy priorities with limited input from Congress. Republicans, who handcuffed Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack's use of the CCC for years, are less resistant now.

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack announces plans to finance a series of large-scale projects on climate-smart farming and forestry practices. He's also tapping his Commodity Credit Corp. spending authority to promote drought resilience, combat African swine fever, and assist farms and schools with supply chain disruptions.

Robert Bonnie, President Joe Biden’s pick to oversee USDA’s farm and conservation programs, insisted Thursday that the administration has the legal authority to use the Commodity Credit Corp. to incentivize climate-friendly farming practices.

Lawmakers are going to be looking into concerns that meatpackers are using their market power to drive down prices paid to producers.

Senate Democrats are proposing to create a new tax credit for clean fuels as part of a package of tax incentives intended to address climate change.

A broad coalition of farm and conservation groups says a USDA-run carbon bank should be used to test ways to establish carbon accounting guidelines, expand the use of climate-friendly farming practices and enable small-scale farms and minority producers to benefit from carbon markets.

A new report from the AGree coalition recommends alternatives for the Agriculture Department to consider in setting up a carbon bank that could be used to develop private credit markets and to assist producers who may be left out of them.