Agriculture is making a big funding request to Congress in an expected final COVID-19 stimulus bill.
It will likely be the last major legislation before the November election, and Senate Republicans don’t want the kind of multi-trillion-dollar COVID-stimulus bills still favored by House Democrats. But the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) is asking for a hefty $68 billion in the bill that could start to take shape next week. AFBF Executive Director Dale Moore says agriculture has a strong case.
“We’ve got a number of men and women across the country, families, that simply do not have access to the food that they need, or certainly, in the quantities that they need, or they can’t afford it, because they’re out of work.”
Moore says the politics of food is feeding the nation, and that means sustaining farmers.
“…Whose markets have disappeared, so that they don’t have to destroy the crops that they’re raising, or the livestock that they’re raising.”
Moore says billions in commodities were already lost from shuttered processing plants and broken supply chains.
“We’ve got to closely examine the supply chain and figure out, how do we make sure, given all the ability that we have to produce food, that something like COVID-19, or a pandemic situation like we’re in, does not cause this kind of disruption in the future.”
Moore says Farm Bureau doesn’t have the answer yet, but one is needed. Without it, no amount of money spent for agriculture in a likely final COVID-19 bill will solve the pandemic food supply problem permanently.
(From the National Association of Farm Broadcasters)