During a hearing of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee last week, Sen. John Hoeven called on U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to continue working with him and his Senate colleagues on solutions for farmers and ranchers who are facing low commodity prices.
“Our farmers and ranchers are facing many challenges right now, including low commodity prices, inadequate access to credit, unfair trade practices in China and an increased regulatory burden,” Hoeven said. “We continue our efforts to help our ag producers overcome these issues, and we are urging Secretary Vilsack to support us in this important work.”
Hoeven pressed Vilsack for his support on initiatives to help farmers and ranchers maintain their operations and sell their products, including the following.
Hoeven secured a new $5 million, nationwide pilot program in the Senate’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 Agriculture Appropriations bill to improve the fairness of the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) payment calculations. The program provides state Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices a role in ensuring accurate yield determinations and allows the offices to fix any inaccuracies between comparable counties by using an alternate calculation method. The senator pressed Vilsack to provide this flexibility to prevent inadequate ARC payments to farmers in affected counties, as happened to farmers in LaMoure and Logan counties for the 2014 crop year.
Hoeven thanked Vilsack for joining the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in launching a new trade enforcement challenge against China.
