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FSA Administrator points to late summer for next round of COVID aid

Farmers and ranchers should expect the next round of COVID aid in late summer or early fall.

Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux tells Brownfield USDA has been conducting a thorough review of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

“For the program components based on this analysis, they’re going to go out in what we call a ‘mega rule.’ We don’t look for that rule to even be published until maybe July 1st, and then it would be payments hopefully late summer (or) early fall.”

He says the Biden administration is rebranding CFAP as the Pandemic Assistance to Producers Program, and there will be about $6 billion available in the next round.

“Which sounds like an awful lot, but we want to make sure that we’re managing expectations. Six billion dollars divided by all of the producers that maybe were in those gaps isn’t going to make anybody whole.”

Signup for the pandemic assistance reopened the first week of April and U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has said producers will have at least 60 days to enroll.