Ag Secretary establishes Dairy Advisory Committee
Washington Ag Today August 27, 2009 Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced that as part of USDA's continuing efforts to listen to and respond to the needs of producers in the dairy industry he is moving forward on establishing the Dairy Industry Advisory Committee. The Secretary talked about the committee during a telephone interview yesterday from California, where he was continuing USDA‘s Rural Tour. Vilsack: “We just announced the establishment of an internal advisory committee that we are accepting nominations for. This will supplement an internal review that we are doing of all dairy programs to determine how we can better provide long term stability in the dairy industry to complement the steps we have taken in the short term from increasing price supports, using the export assistance program to surplus commodity purchases to try and shore this industry up.” As for any more short term action by the USDA to help dairy? Vilsack: “Well we, uh, are hopefully taking a look at what happens when the new fiscal year starts October 1st and our capacity to purchase additional surplus commodities is replenished. Because of the tremendous stress that a number of commodities have felt as a result of the recent downturn in the economy we have had to use virtually all of our authority so we have to wait until the new fiscal year and we get new authority.” As the Secretary mentioned USDA is seeking nominations for the advisory committee, which will have up 15 members from the dairy industry. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network. ? ? ?
