Now that USDA has announced a new round of disaster assistance to agricultural producers with CFAP-2, the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) has created a resource guide to help dairy farmers understand and apply for the program. The toolbox includes a breakdown of what the latest Coronavirus Food Assistance Program includes for dairy, as well as a link to relevant application resources. Highlights of CFAP-2 include:
- A dairy payment amounting to $1.20-per-hundredweight on a farm’s production during the last nine months of 2020. Dairy payments will be based on actual milk production from April 1 to Aug. 31, 2020. Milk production for Sept. 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2020, will be estimated by FSA, using daily average production from the April-August base period of known production.
- 100% of the payment will be made once a farm’s eligibility is determined, meaning there will be no 20% hold-back as with earlier assistance.
- For dairy beef, producers are eligible for cattle inventory payment on bull calves and dairy steers, but not for breeding stock. The payment is $55-per-head on eligible cattle in inventory on a date between April and the end of August selected by the producer.
- Significantly, this round’s payment limitation provision has been expanded to include trusts and estates for both rounds of CFAP payments, meaning those who were disadvantaged by restrictive trust-related payment interpretations in the first round will have their situation resolved for that round as well as in the latest tranche of aid. The application of direct attribution is also modified so payment limits won’t be reduced based on ownership shares, providing more equitable support to dairy farmers of various ownership structures.
A full range of coronavirus-related materials to help guide dairy producers, processors and allied businesses is available at nmpf.org/coronavirus. NMPF also set up another webpage dedicated to resources to help dairy farmers struggling through natural disasters at nmpf.org/disaster-resources/.