Ag scty Tom Vilsack says only 0.1 percent of Trump administration covid farm relief to Black farmers
Source: Washington Post
A tiny fraction of the Trump administration’s coronavirus relief for American farmers — just 0.1 percent of the overall package — went to Black farmers, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed in February with strong bipartisan support for a second stint in the role. In an interview with The Washington Post, Vilsack for the first time noted the extent to which the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated existing disparities across the American economy.
The distribution of coronavirus relief increased those gaps, he said. Black farmers received only $20.8 million of nearly $26 billion in two rounds of payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program announced by the Trump administration last April, he said. “We saw 99 percent of the money going to White farmers and 1 percent going to socially disadvantaged farmers and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent,” he said. “Look at it another way: The top 10 percent of farmers in the country received 60 percent of the value of the covid payments. And the bottom 10 percent received 0.26 percent.”
Of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 — 1.3 percent — are Black, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s down from 1 million a century ago, because of widespread land loss. Vilsack said the Biden administration would be focused on closing those inequalities. The USDA will battle three systemic problems concurrently, he said: a broken farm system, food insecurity and a health-care crisis. After eight years as agriculture secretary during the Obama administration, Vilsack returns to the USDA at a time of rising food insecurity because of the pandemic.
With high unemployment and American food banks and pantries around the country running low, Vilsack is charged with expanding and reimagining food assistance programs, which account for over two-thirds of USDA’s budget. SNAP (the food assistance program commonly called food stamps), WIC (a program for pregnant women, infants and young children), Pandemic-EBT, (a program meant to replace free or subsidized meals for kids now learning online) and school meal programs are all on the table. During his previous term, critics say he failed to address long-standing complaints of discrimination against Black farmers in access to USDA loans and other programs.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/25/vilsack-interview-usda-rescue-plan/
Full headline: Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack says only 0.1 percent of Trump administration’s covid farm relief went to Black farmers
John Boyd, founder and President of the National Black Farmers Association has been fighting for years - https://www.nationalblackfarmersassociation.org/
Some might recall one of his protests where his org drove farm tractors into D.C. to push for Pigford II legislation (which was designed to target those who were unaware of Pigford I, a settlement of the lawsuit between USDA and a consortium of black farmers (with a consent decree) (Pigford v Glickman) that would reimburse impacted black farmers for past USDA discrimination when it came to the distribution of loans and subsidies). The protest happened back in 2013.
And now what is being admitted, is that with the previous 2 stimulus laws, once again it's more Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The hope is this latest stimulus from the "American Rescue Plan" legislation, will finally address this continual problem of these farmers getting the same access.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And yet Graham and other republicans claimed the recent rescue package was unwised and racist because White Famers were being shafted
republicans are openly and bold racists.
They would have to pass legislation to raise the budget cap, which might be able to be done via reconciliation as that avenue is still open since the last econciliation used for the "American Rescue Plan" was done via a different category ("budget" ). I.e., there are only 3 categories of bills that can use reconciliation (and those can only be used once for each category during a fiscal year), with one category now already used.
So they still have 2 reconciliation category options left this year including one dealing with the "debt" and one dealing with the "tax" categories.
But then after all that, it would still take us back to the same filibuster (cloture) issue because a funding bill would need to be drafted for it. The option to throw some of this stuff onto the Defense Authorization Bill (like the minimum wage increase) has been bandied about - especially since that is how the last one was passed. Am not sure if SNAP expansion could be thrown on that though.
