Trade Adjustment Asisstance for Farmers Program
Washington Ag Today March 18, 2010 Agriculture commodity producers and fishermen will soon get some help in developing business plans to help them compete in the global marketplace. Peter Burr of the Foreign Agricultural Service explains the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers Program or TAA. Burr: “This program is really designed to help U.S. producers of agricultural commodities, that would be raw agricultural commodities and fishermen, adjust to the changing environment. And in particular it is to help those industries that are seeing injury. And that is their prices have decline, their production has declined, the value of their production has declined by more than 15% over a period of time, and that decline is due to a rise in imports. And that is the key. So, if there are number of industries out there that are having a hard time competing in the world marketplace. They are feeling injury. And imports are taking away some of the domestic market for them. Those are the guys that are going to be interested in this program. It is primarily a training program but there is some cash benefit associated with it, but the real benefit is training.” The deadline for submitting petitions is April 14th and then once FAS certifies a petition producers have 90 days to apply for training and benefits. Both the FAS and Farm Service Agency are involved in administering TAA. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network. ?
