Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently addressed the 2014 Farm Bill implementation progress with the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
Vilsack compared the progress to the 2008 Farm Bill, which took over one year to set up disaster assistance programs. In 2014, it took less than 10 weeks to reboot many of the same disaster programs. Nearly 33,000 applications have been received as of May 1, 2014 with payments of $16.3 million distributed, according to Agri-Pulse.
The new Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) of the Agricultural Act of 2014 combines public and private dollars to ensure funds are available to solve problems and create opportunities through research and new innovation. The farm bill provides $200 million that can be matched with private sector funding.
He noted that the farm bill allocated funding for education and decision-making tools, and the USDA will announce the funding allocations for state-based extension services to educate producers on May 22.
Also discussed was the definition of “actively engaged” for the purpose of determining farm program eligibility and reorganizing USDA with a new secretary of trade and foreign development and Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). Vilsack noted most farmers and ranchers are already in compliance with the conservation requirement to purchase crop insurance. But there are about 6,000 farmers and ranchers who may be impacted and will have until mid-2015 to comply. They will be able to buy crop insurance, just not with government subsidies.