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Dairy payments before Christmas, Vilsack says
Emergency direct payments to U.S. dairy operators will be delivered before the holidays. That’s the word from Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, “The actual cash is $290 Million and we anticipate getting that distributed, certainly before the Christmas holiday.”
It’s part of the $350 Million dairy relief package passed by Congress to help struggling producers. Sixty-million of that will be used to buy cheese for government food programs, starting next March. The remaining $290 Million is direct payment relief, “We may keep a little bit, a small amount in the neighborhood of $10 Million back to make sure that we haven’t forgotten somebody or that we’ve calculated things wrong, that kind of thing. But, the vast majority of it, 95% of it, is going to be out the door.”
The relief funds were approved as part of the 2010 Ag Appropriations bill signed into law in October.
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