Stimulus Bill Helps Farmers & Ranchers

Stimulus Bill Helps Farmers & Ranchers

Rick Worthington
Rick Worthington
Stimulus Bill Helps Farmers & Ranchers

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act passing through Congress last week includes relief for rural America.

Part of the help for Farmers and Ranchers is the provision for cash payments to individuals... It breaks down to $1200 per individual and $2,400 per couple, and that increases by $500 per child.

Andrew Walmsley is with the American Farm Bureau and says, the relief package includes several provisions for rural America, including rural health.

“We know a lot of our rural hospitals are already strained, but with the potential for being overwhelmed with cases of coronavirus, there is some direct support to those rural hospitals. There’s also some additional funding through USDA for telehealth and telemedicine. And then there’s for rural businesses and communities, some through the Small Business Administration, others through USDA, but hundreds of millions of dollars that will be soon available for those impacted by this pandemic.”

The bill also includes more than $15 billion for nutrition programs, and relief for farmers and ranchers.

“The bill replenishes the Commodity Credit Corporation. This is a USDA program that authorizes funding for the department to adapt to different crisis’s. That replenishes it by $14 billion. And then there’s a specific $9.5 billion for the Secretary to utilize in COVID-19 response to help all of agriculture, specifically targeting specialty crop growers, those that are growing in the local food markets, dairy and livestock producers.”

In all, it's a $2 trillion bill.

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