The Hagstrom Report

Friday, April 17, 2020 | Alert | Volume 10 Number 104

Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-NY., Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, D-N.M., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., led colleagues in the House and Senate today to write a bipartisan letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, urging the administration to establish a “Rural COVID-19 Task Force.”

The task force would help to identify rural challenges, develop strategies and policy recommendations, assemble a guide of available federal programs and resources, consult with USDA and congressional committees and provide oversight on the distribution of funding during the coronavirus pandemic.

A footnote in a Congressional Budget Office letter to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., says CBO expects the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act increase of $14 billion for the Agriculture Department’s Commodity Credit Corporation to be divided between $10 billion in spending in fiscal year 2020 and $4 billion in fiscal year 2021.

Footnote 17 on Page 24 says: “That amount includes $14.3 billion stemming from changes to mandatory programs.”

“Section 11002 of division B provides the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) with a $14 billion reimbursement for net realized losses in fiscal year 2020. The CCC is limited to $30 billion in borrowing authority at any time and is authorized to receive an annual reimbursement for its net realized losses.

“This provision is a supplemental reimbursement to the CCC during fiscal year 2020. The effect is to lift the borrowing cap during the current fiscal year by $14 billion.

“CBO estimates that this additional borrowing authority will result in increased outlays of $10 billion in fiscal year 2020 and $4 billion in fiscal year 2021. That estimate is based on information that the Department of Agriculture is considering using this new 2020 authority to make additional producer support payments that may be similar to the trade mitigation payments announced in 2018 and 2019.

“Division B also provides $300 million for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; that funding will be used for food distribution efforts for Indian reservations and U.S. territories.”

Four employees of a Tyson’s poultry plant in rural southwest Georgia have died after becoming infected with the coronavirus, a company spokesman told the Associated Press today.

Edgar Fields, president of the Southeast Council of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said its members are “heartbroken” over the deaths and said the poultry industry has not taken the steps needed to protect its workers.

In a news release, the union provided a list of recommendations to the companies to address the issues.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue today announced approval of requests by North Carolina and the District of Columbia to provide online purchasing of food to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) households.

In joining the pilot program, North Carolina and D.C. will be able to implement online purchasing with authorized SNAP retailers, although start dates for those programs have yet to be announced.

North Carolina’s SNAP participation is over 1.2 million individuals in almost 600,000 households, and totals nearly $1.7 billion annually in federal funding.

The district’s SNAP participation is over 100,000 individuals, more than 66,000 households, and totals nearly $200 million annually in federal funding.

The pilot program is already operating in Alabama, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, and Washington State. USDA this month approved Arizona, California, Florida and Idaho to join the program.

The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association released a report today estimating the industry’s losses to the COVID-19 pandemic at $14.6 billion.

The analysis focuses on the effects of the coronavirus crisis to three primary sectors of the cattle production chain: feedlot, backgrounding, and cow/calf.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, another cattle group, estimated the losses at $13.6 billion, $1 billion less.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Thursday that the Agriculture Department will not reopen the Dairy Margin Coverage program, AgWeb reported.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed an executive order providing two weeks of additional paid sick time for workers in the food chain.

It covers farm workers, food facilities and deliverers who are unable to work.

“The move was greeted as good news by both the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the California Grocers Association,” The Sacramento Bee reported.

The Bee also reported that a worker had died at a Safeway distribution center.

Newsom signed the document amid increasing reports of grocery store employee absences, illnesses and deaths and delays for home grocery delivery, USA Today reported.

Small Business Administration statistics showed that few in agriculture made use of the SBA’s Payment Protection Program, which has run out of money, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Market Intel service said today.

Congress is debating additional funds for the program, which was aimed at helping businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic, but “in order for additional funds to be helpful for agriculture, however, many outstanding questions need to be answered,” Farm Bureau economist Veronica Nigh wrote.

Developing countries are facing some food delivery problems because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the situation could get much worse in six months if farmers cannot get seeds and fertilizer and cannot bring their production to urban markets, a Nigerian-based consultant said today during a panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., today introduced the Agricultural Security Risk Review Act, which formally would make the Agriculture secretary a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency committee that reviews potential national security threats of foreign investment in the United States.

Despite recent rains, the American West is in the midst of what scientists call one of the biggest “mega-droughts” of the past 1,200 years, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“California’s crushing five-year drought came to a welcome end after record rain three winters ago, the Chronicle wrote.

“Or did it? Although forests are greener, reservoirs are fuller and widespread water restrictions are gone, many believe the past few years, in which there was pretty decent rainfall, were just a blip on a troubling long-term skid into drier times.”

Land O’Lakes decision to drop an Indian maiden from its label in favor of adding the phrase “farmer-owned” is causing controversy in Minnesota where the co-op is based.

The company announced in February that it would change the labels, but the controversy is new.

CEO Beth Ford told Fortune she had decided to make the change after a strategic review showed that many consumers did not realize Land O’Lakes is farmer-owned co-op.

“It’s not that we hid it,” Ford said. “We just thought that people knew.”

Consumers are now more inclined to buy products that they can identify with farmers, and the co-op decided it wanted to emphasize its farmer ownership as it approaches its 100th anniversary.

“Research shows that consumers care about farmers and are excited when they learn Land O’Lakes is farmer-owned,” said senior vice president Heather Anfang in a February news release.

“We’re eager to share that message with shoppers and extending that farmer-owned story to our packaging is arguably our most direct vehicle to communicate with consumers.”

The new packaging appeared first on tub butter spreads, foodservice products and deli cheese, will begin appearing on stick butter this spring and summer, and will be rolled out on all products by the end of the year, the co-op said.

But today the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the son of the artist who created a version of the illustration said he had mixed feelings about the Land O’Lakes decision.

The Star Tribune reported that the illustration of the maiden was created by Arthur C. Hanson and that her appearance was modified over the years.

Ojibwe artist Patrick DesJarlait remade Mia in the mid-1950s, the Star Tribune said. DesJarlait also created the popular Hamm’s Beer bear, and his work is represented in the collection of the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul.

DesJarlait’s son said he had mixed feelings about it, even though the appropriation of Native American images by big companies has been controversial.

“I’m sad to see it go, but I can understand why it’s gone,” said Robert DesJarlait, Patrick’s son and an artist and writer, from his home in Onamia, Minn. “We live in a politically correct time, so maybe it was time to get rid of it. It certainly devolved into a stereotype.”

Des Jarlait added, “But in our family, my dad’s work is a source of pride for us. He broke barriers as an Ojibwe artist from Red Lake. Back then, you didn’t find native people in those kinds of jobs, and this gave him the opportunity to put his spin on a well-known native image.”

People are baking a lot amid the coronavirus pandemic, but sourdough bread made with homegrown starter is the most popular, Quartz reported.

A documentary about Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug titled “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World” will air on the PBS series “American Experience” on Tuesday.

As the subtitle of “A Tale of Good Deeds and Unintended Consequences” suggests, the documentary is not the totally positive story about Borlaug that is well known in agriculture circles, Chris Clayton writes in an article for DTN/The Progressive Farmer.

Although the one-hour documentary explores Borlaug’s life as a wheat breeder that led to the Green Revolution that is credited with feeding billions of people, it also features the controversies that have come to surround his work as agricultural policy thinking has evolved.

The program will be shown at 8 p.m. EDT and 7 p.m. CDT on PBS stations.

Some farmers markets were open in Washington last weekend and will be open this weekend after fulfilling Mayor Muriel Bowser’s mandate that they submit plans for social distancing, while the status of other markets across the country is mixed.

“Nationwide, we are seeing the same type of changes as farmers markets operators adapt quickly to reorganize the organization and physical layout of farmers markets to implement social distancing and other best practices to minimize the spread of the virus,” Ben Feldman, the executive director of the Farmers Market Coalition said in an email.

“The challenge is that these changes result in increased costs even as income from vendor stall fees decline,” Feldman said. “These two factors together create a very real financial risk for the operators of farmers markets, which would leave farmers without a market for their products

“In some parts of the country farmers markets have been shuttered by local officials, despite food and agriculture being an essential service. Unfortunately, no direct payments have been authorized for farmers market operators and many are not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program."

Here are photos taken last Sunday at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market operated by FreshFarm.

At the bottom is a photo of the Twin Springs Fruit Farm market at the Maret School, a much smaller operation where social distancing is easy. The market at the Maret school is open on Saturday mornings.