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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
USDA does not provide standard, user-friendly guidance to state and local agencies that implement food pantry, assistance programs, and does not effectively track program progress, a recent Government Accountability Office report found.
Ongoing partisan battles over nutrition assistance and Inflation Reduction Act funding have received all the attention but there are plenty of other policy disagreements in the approaches that leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees are taking on a new farm bill.
Early last year, Mid-Ohio Food Collective leaders looked at their warehouse and saw shelves filled to only 32% capacity, down from the 105% peak after COVID struck in 2020.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Friday announced $2.7 billion in total funding from USDA's Commodity Credit Corp. account to build domestic fertilizer capacity, support school meal providers and fund emergency commodity purchases by states.
Early in the pandemic, federal funding boosted efforts to get farm-fresh produce to people in need of food. Nearly a year after the Farmers to Families Food Box program ended, some participating distributors, farms, and food banks have found ways to continue reducing food waste, expanding markets and increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables for people who turn to food banks or pantries.
The Agriculture Department is ending the Farmers to Families Food Box program and shifting to more effective ways of delivering fresh produce and dairy products, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The $900 billion COVID relief bill, passed in late December, is providing new funding for programs to help feed the millions of people whose jobs have been lost to the pandemic, but anti-hunger advocates say more help is needed and have already turned to Congress and the incoming Biden administration for help.
Congressional leaders reach agreement with the White House on a $900 billion COVID-19 relief package that will include a new round of aid to various agriculture sectors while also ensuring the deductibility of expenses used to get forgiveness of Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Congressional leaders have reached agreement on a $2 trillion economic rescue package that would replenish the Agriculture Department’s Commodity Credit Corp. authority and earmark additional money for livestock and specialty crop producers as well as local agriculture.
Lawmakers hope to include provisions in a new farm bill that would reduce food waste by encouraging donations of ugly produce and surplus commodities that would otherwise be discarded.
