USDA
Opinion: The opportunity to unleash farmers to fight climate change
Producing environmental benefits will become an important enterprise for American farmers, giving them the ability to monetize their response to climate change and other environmental challenges. But as these new enterprises get going, farmers, agribusiness professionals, researchers, policymakers, and rural leaders need to ask how these solutions can be created by farmers — not just be something that happens to farmers. <strong> (No paywall) </strong>
Preliminary injunction against USDA debt relief for minority farmers
USDA to ask consumers, what does Product of USA mean to you?
Amid complaints that the labels are deceptive, the USDA will undertake a top-to-bottom review of the Product of USA labels that appear on packages of meat, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Thursday. In addition to identifying meat from animals raised in the United States, the label can currently be used on foreign meat that is processed in U.S. plants.
Bumper U.S. corn and soybean harvests are within reach
The United States is headed for its largest corn harvest ever and its third-largest soybean crop, based on the USDA's annual Acreage report, issued on Wednesday. The mammoth crops would be ready for harvest late this summer, replenishing U.S. grain inventories that are being drained by robust demand at home and abroad.
Sonny Perdue’s undisclosed deal with ADM raises ethics questions
Moore will be first Black chief of the Forest Service
Randy Moore, a career USDA employee who now oversees 20 million acres of national forests in California, will be the first Black chief of the U.S. Forest Service in its 116-year history, announced Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday.
House, Senate bills boost rural energy funding fivefold
The USDA program that promotes rural renewable energy production and energy efficiency would see annual funding of $250 million along with a $1 billion injection to address a backlog in applications under companion Senate and House bills introduced Thursday.
Reinstate organic livestock rule, OTA asks judge
With eye to revival, USDA to revisit animal welfare rule for organic farms
Eleven months after President Trump took office, the USDA said it lacked the authority to implement livestock welfare rules for organic farmers, despite having spent years working on them. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Thursday that the USDA will reconsider that 2017 interpretation, a step that could lead to a revival of the regulation to give chickens, pigs, and cattle on organic farms more elbow room than they commonly get on factory farms.
Vilsack calls out farmers suing to block debt relief for minority farmers
Lawsuits to block $4 billion in loan forgiveness for minority farmers show a lack of historical awareness, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the BIO online convention on Wednesday. "It's a wonder where those farmers were over the last 100 years, when their Black counterparts were being discriminated against and didn't hear a peep from white farmers about how unfortunate that circumstance was."
USDA to implement up to $4 billion in pandemic aid through mid-August
Biofuel producers, dairy farmers and meat processors will receive a major portion of up to $4 billion in coronavirus aid programs that will be implemented over the next 60 days, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Tuesday. He also said the USDA will take "a pretty unique approach," which could include a revolving loan program, to help small meat packers go into business or expand.
Senators propose loan forgiveness for small farmers
The Agriculture Department would offer small farmers one-time loan forgiveness of up to $250,000 under legislation announced by five Democratic senators on Thursday. Lead sponsor Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said she would try to include debt relief in the upcoming infrastructure bill "to make certain our farmers are not left behind."
Bills would disclose race, gender of farm subsidy recipients
The USDA would be obliged to disclose the race and gender of farm subsidy recipients as well as how much money they received under companion bills filed by two Black members of the House and Senate Agriculture committees on Wednesday.
SNAP time limits didn’t boost employment — study
The 90-day limit on food stamps for able-bodied adults without children, enacted as part of welfare reform in 1996, failed to move people into jobs or increase their incomes after the Great Recession, said a USDA study released on Tuesday. "The findings should prove relevant as the economy recovers and states begin to re-introduce the time limit" after the pandemic, said the researchers who carried out the study.
Senators prod USDA for pandemic payments to contract growers
USDA spending nearly doubles during pandemic
Land stewardship would get a modest increase from Biden
Advocates: Agriculture needs $200 billion increase for climate mitigation
Congress should provide $200 billion in new funding over a decade to reach the goal of "negative emission farming," said 450 conservation, consumer, farm and environmental groups in a letter on Tuesday. The increase would be the equivalent of all the funding in the 2018 farm bill for crop subsidies, land stewardship, crop insurance, research and rural development.
Ten RECs get $4.4 billion in New ERA clean energy funding
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced $4.37 billion in grants and loans to 10 rural electric cooperatives on Thursday for clean energy projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1.1 million tons a year. With the awards, the USDA has allocated nearly $9 billion of the $9.7 billion available in the Empowering Rural America program.