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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
The Agriculture Department has more than doubled funding for a program to help rebuild grain storage capacity in regions hit by storms in 2021 and 2022, but agency officials say the additional funds will likely not be enough to cover the high number of applications they have seen.
Farmers and ranchers looking to serve their community next year can now be nominated for the Farm Service Agency’s county committees. This year, the Department of Agriculture is streamlining the process with the addition of a GIS tool for producers to make nominations and vote.
Grapes cultivated for wine and forage for livestock will now qualify for the Emergency Relief Program (ERP) Phase Two after a modification made by the USDA.
The chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service expressed confidence that the agency could hire the staff it needs to handle a sharp increase in climate-related funding, despite many applicants for soil conservationist positions lacking a key job requirement – a class in soil science.
Farm groups are calling for Agriculture Department loan program payment rates to be increased in the upcoming farm bill, while agency officials look at other ways to make the programs more accessible and flexible for producers.
The administrator of USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Zach Ducheneaux, says USDA is rethinking the way it structures farm loans to lower the risk of default.
Western producers in areas once dealing with devastating droughts scrambled to keep their livestock safe and fed this winter as a series of storms caused record-breaking amounts of precipitation. Now, the snowpack is beginning to melt, and there are concerns about potential flooding.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee Monday that he has hired more staff to track foreign farmland purchases after a three-year gap in his department’s application of disclosure penalties.
Senate Ag Committee members used a hearing on farm bill conservation programs Wednesday to examine the Conservation Reserve Program more deeply as Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux touted his "working lands" approach to the program.
