Another Helping of Pandemic-Fueled Aid on the Plate for Farmers
April 14, 2021 USDA has announced the availability of more than $330 million to help agricultural producers and organizations in the food supply chain recover from the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding is part of USDA’s Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative launched last month and includes $169.9 million for the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, the availability of $75 million for Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (formerly known as Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive) grantees, and approximately $80 million in payments to domestic users of upland and extra-long staple cotton.
According to USDA, this funding will aid in developing new markets for U.S. agricultural products, expand the specialty crop food sector, and incent the purchase of fruits and vegetables by low-income consumers.
This announcement comes amid reports that USDA will be doing away with its Farmers to Families Food Box program. Since its launch in spring 2020, the Food Box program and its contractors “have delivered 156,698,542 boxes of fresh produce, milk, dairy, and cooked meats to disadvantaged Americans.”
USDA launched the Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative in March with $6.5 billion in available funding to address shortfalls and disparities in how assistance was distributed in previous COVID-19 assistance packages, with a specific focus on strengthening outreach to underserved producers and communities and small and medium agricultural operations.
“We launched USDA Pandemic Assistance for Producers to respond in a broader, fairer way to the pandemic’s impact across food and agriculture, and we are following through on our promise,” says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in wide-ranging impacts that were felt throughout the agricultural sector. The Biden-Harris Administration is focused on ensuring that the entire agricultural sector successfully rebuilds following the pandemic, and the funding we’re announcing today will reach a broader set of producers and businesses than previous COVID-19 aid programs.”
For more details, visit ams.usda.gov.
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