43: USDA COVID-19 Relief Programs Transcript
Hallie: Hello and welcome to One to Grow On. A show where we dig into questions about agriculture and try to understand how food production impacts us and our world. My name is Hallie Casey and I studied and currently work in agriculture.
Chris: I’m Chris Casey, Hallie’s dad. Each episode we focus on an area of agriculture or food production to discuss. This week we are discussing USDA COVID-19 relief programs.
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Chris: Oh yeah. That was a mouthful.
Hallie: It is a bit of a mouthful. I wanted to take some time to discuss some of the United States Department of Agriculture programs that have come out to wrap up our last conversation in the previous episode about COVID-19 and the supply chains because in that we alluded to how expensive is it really to have a supply chain that’s so vulnerable. I really wanted to talk about some numbers and look at what the federal government has had to do and tried to implement in order to make up for the fact that the supply chains were just so fragile.
Chris: Last time, I made comments when you would talk about shorter supply lines and more localized food systems, my brain went to that sounds like my food getting more expensive and then you came back with, well, actually when we have to deal with large supply line failures, then we have these programs that you’re talking about and it can be much more expensive in the long run.
Hallie: Exactly. Yeah, let’s talk about it. I wanted to start off by saying, I am not really going to be talking about SNAP or any food assistance. There is a lot happening in terms of food assistance from the USDA. I am mostly just going to be focusing on farmer focused programs. We’re going to talk a little bit about some food bank stuff, but there is a lot going on with SNAP right now. If you want more info on that, I think that’s what the extra research on Patreon is going to be about. It’s wild you all.
Chris: Okay. Farms are eligible for the PPP. For me and the listener at home, will you please define what PPP stands for?
Hallie: Yeah, farms are eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program. They’re also mostly now eligible for EIDL, which is also called EIDL, both of these programs became available in March for all companies generally. Mostly it was focused on small businesses and it was focused on economic relief. However, they were first come first serve. When EIDL first came out, I’m pretty sure like farmers were not eligible for it and there was a big stink and then Congress had to move super-fast to change the statute so that farms were eligible for it. But this is just something that pretty much every small business in America is and was eligible for. I think at this point, PPP has been depleted and they’re looking at adding more PPP into the next federal aid package. But this is something that I have not factored into when we’re talking about total amounts of money, but is like a huge factor. A lot of farms did get this money.
Chris: If Old McDonald had a farm, he could get EIDL?
Hallie: Yeah, [laughs]. That’s a pretty funny joke dad.
Chris: Thank you. Thank you very much. What is EIDL?
Hallie: EIDL is the economic something disaster loan.
Chris: Okay. All right.
Hallie: I don’t know what the I stands for.
Chris: We’ve got the Paper Paycheck Protection service in a disaster loan.
Hallie: Yeah, then you didn’t have to repay the loan. Not much of a loan. More of a grant.
Chris: Nice.
Hallie: In late May, USDA’s farm service agency announced that they would now allow farmers with existing farm service agency loans to essentially defer their payments for up to a year and they’re talking about extending that period. Farm service agency, this is super huge because this is where the majority of lending comes from as farm service agency and farm service agency backed loans for farmers. A big deal, not specifically granted money or anything like that, but it is like a relief action.
Chris: Okay. The farm service agency loan, that’s a different kind of loan than the EIDL.
Hallie: Right.
Chris: The PPP program I don’t even think that is a loan, is it? The farm service agency loan, that’s like a normal loan that farmers would get in a normal year.
Hallie: Yeah, it’s like existing loans. If back in January you took some money out and you borrowed it against farm service agency, and then you don’t have to pay that back for up to a year if not longer.
Chris: My brain goes to the same place it does when I hear things about rent deferment and other such programs where, but you still have to pay it back.
Hallie: Right. Eventually they will be having to pay it back, but it’s good that they’re deferring payments. That’s super good. The CARES act, which passed in April had about $850 million for food bank costs and at least 600 million of that had to be explicitly for food purchasing. You had some money in there for food banks that needed administrative assistance or added labor or something like that. But $600 million was earmarked just for food purchasing for emergency food relief.
Chris: Oh, very cool. Okay.
Hallie: Next, I wanted to talk about late April a $300 billion program that was passed by Congress called the Farm to Families Food Box Program.
Chris: We’re just going program month by month at this point.
Hallie: I’m pretty much going chronologically. I mean, I started off with just generally, but now I’m kind of getting into month to month.
Chris: Yeah, in the world of COVID this is not something that would normally happen, right? We don’t usually have new programs each month that handle this sort of thing. This is a unique situation.
Hallie: [Laughs]. This Farm to Families Food Box Program was extremely unique. I actually sat in on I think on the first webinar announcing this program. Initially the idea for this program, they called it truck to trunk.
Chris: [Laughs].
Hallie: The idea was that you were getting food from farms off of the truck and then getting it directly to nonprofits providing emergency crisis relief. In order to get this funding, mostly they were giving this money to like aggregators and distributors, middlemen. Some larger farmers got it.