Articles Tagged with ''pandemic''

Farmers who were facing a steep drop in government payments in 2021 will instead see a third round of coronavirus relief payments and other producers and ag processors left out of previous aid programs this year will get help this time, under a massive stimulus package and government funding bill.

Frontline essential workers, including those in the food and agriculture industry, should be in the second group to receive COVID-19 vaccines, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Sunday.

Lawmakers have given themselves one more week to reach a deal on a new coronavirus relief package that congressional leaders want to wrap into a government-wide funding bill for fiscal 2021.

It’s official. Georgia Democrat David Scott will chair the House Agriculture Committee next year. The full House conference voted to approve Scott as recommended by the House Democratic steering committee.

The Trump administration’s plans for distributing COVID-19 vaccines put a priority on inoculating workers in the food and agriculture sector, but how quickly the shots become available to the industry may still depend on how fast the vaccine can be distributed.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has been involved in just about every consequential piece of agricultural legislation in the last four decades. But the bill he thinks may have the most lasting impact is the 1996 farm bill known as Freedom to Farm (or “Freedom to Fail” by its detractors). The bill formally ended the system of production controls and commodity subsidies first imposed during the Depression.

Reduced consumer incomes around the world and supply chain difficulties during the pandemic have taken a toll on ag and food exporters in developing countries, but overall trade has remained “remarkably resilient” and some suppliers have prospered, according to a new publication from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

As the economic impacts of COVID-19 spread, communities around the world are facing yet another invisible and immediate challenge: hunger. The pandemic is set to push an estimated 265 million people worldwide to the brink of starvation by the end of the year. Denise Cheung and Dilip Wagle take a look at how these global challenges are affecting a local community in the United States.