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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Farm groups are lobbying Congress and the Trump administration for a number of relief measures to help producers cope with the slide in many commodity markets that has deepened as the COVID-19 pandemic worsens.
The Agriculture Department’s inspector general is undertaking an extended investigation of the administration’s trade assistance programs, starting with whether USDA had the proper legal authority to make direct payments to farmers.
The Senate overwhelmingly approves a stopgap bill to keep the government funded through Nov. 21 and replenish the account that USDA relies on to make trade-assistance and commodity program payments.
A senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee called the panel’s top Republican a racist on Twitter as the normally bipartisan committee was rocked by funding over a measure needed to fund farmers’ trade aid payments.
A House stopgap spending bill aimed at avoiding an Oct. 1 government shutdown would ensure that trade assistance to farmers continues and also would bolster specialty crop research and fund USDA’s coming hemp program.
Trump administration officials have been promising for months that Sonny Perdue’s Agriculture Department will protect farmers and ranchers from billions of dollars of tariffs from China, Mexico, Canada and the EU. But how much can USDA help?
