The USDA will pro-rate its final round of pandemic payments to timber harvesters and haulers to stay within the $200 million limit for the aid program, officials said on Thursday. Meanwhile, USDA data showed disbursements of $6.98 billion in coronavirus relief to farmers and ranchers this year.
Pandemic assistance has flowed through a variety of channels to agriculture this year. Most of it was delivered directly to producers through the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), based on crop or livestock production. Some went into stopgap programs; one defrayed the costs incurred by producers to cull herds in 2020, for example, and another offset the loss of income by hog and poultry contract growers.
USDA economists estimate that producers will receive $8 billion through CFAP this year, as federal aid programs wind down and the economy recovers. Last year, they got $23.5 billion.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the timber assistance in July, available to loggers and timber haulers who suffered a gross revenue loss of at least 10 percent during 2020. Like other sectors of the economy, production at sawmills and wood processing plants was disrupted by the pandemic, with the effects rippling back to loggers and truckers.
Final payments will begin next week, said the Farm Service Agency. “We made initial payments as we enrolled customers … and are happy to now finalize payments to provide this much-needed assistance,” said FSA administrator Zach Ducheneaux.
Besides pro-rating payments, the USDA said that to stay within budget, the maximum payment would be $75,000. Originally, the payment limit was $125,000. Applicants got a first-round payment of up to $2,000. The USDA said the payment factor for the final payment would be 70.5 percent.
Some $30.8 billion has been paid through two versions of CFAP since May 2020, according to USDA data. The Biden administration temporarily froze CFAP payments when it took office and in March announced a remodeling of pandemic assistance to “reach a broader set of producers,” including socially disadvantaged farmers, specialty crop and organic producers, timber harvesters, and biofuel producers.
On Thursday, the USDA said it “has provided a broad range of support to America’s farmers and ranchers as part of its Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative. … USDA expects further pandemic assistance to continue to fill remaining gaps later this year.”