Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday he’s encouraged by talks on Capitol Hill aimed at getting a farm bill passed this year and urged lawmakers to be “practical” as they iron our disagreements over reference prices and nutrition assistance.
Speaking on a call with reporters to announce $35 million in grants to independent meat processors, Vilsack said, “I think it is obviously a positive sign that folks are talking, that folks are thinking about the possibility of getting a farm bill done before the end of the year,” pointing to remarks from Senate Ag Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., about the importance of providing certainty to farmers.
However, getting a bill to the finish line is “going to require either a very practical look at the level of increases in reference prices that can be afforded within the existing budget available to the farm bill, or a recognition that they simply don't have enough money in that framework, and they need to add additional resources to be able to get reference prices to the point where folks are satisfied,” the secretary said.
“At the end of the day, the leadership has to decide which of those two routes they follow,” he said. “And once they do that, I think it'll be a relatively simple process of getting the farm bill done. Farmers will have the certainty, their bankers will be at ease. We'll know what the rules of the game are for the next five years."
He noted that ."there are some red lines for folks. I think Democrats feel very strongly that there can't be reductions to nutrition assistance, in large part because deals were made when the debt ceiling was lifted that there would be no further restrictions or reductions in the safety net that's available to families that are struggling financially in this country."
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At the same time, "I think it's fair to say that there's an expectation that reference prices are will need to be adjusted. The question is, how much? And the question is, where does the money come from to pay for those adjustments?"
The 15 grants announced Thursday are going to processors in 12 states. Among them: a $10 million grant to America's Heartland Packing, a subsidiary of American Foods Group, which will use the funs to build a plant outside of St. Louis that can process 624,000 head of cattle per year. The operation “is expected to create 1,363 full-time jobs with annual salary ranges significantly higher than the county average,” USDA said in a summary of the grants.
Some recipients of grants already awarded spoke on the call about the difference it has made to their businesses.
Carl Cushing of Vermont Livestock Slaughter & Processing, which received a $1.1 million grant abut two years ago to expand and modernize its facility, said he anticipates the improvements, which are close to completion, will double the number of beef cattle, hogs and lambs that can be processed.
Walter Schweitzer, director of the Montana Premium Processing Cooperative and president of the Montana Farmers Union, thanked USDA for the $291,000 grant it received in November 2022.
"It was critically important for us to be able to become a USDA-inspected facility and to expand our processing capacity," Schweitzer said.
Grants went to operations in Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York and Pennsylvania. Since the start of the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program, USDA has provided 74 awards worth more about $325 million.
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