President Biden and his administration decided to issue a regulatory freeze so that they could take a look at federal programs, one of those being the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program 2.1. Even with the freeze, American Farm Bureau Federation’s Economist Michael Nepveux encourages farmers to sign up while they can.
“There’s been some conversation around potentially the program being canceled, that is not the case, it’s just a temporary freeze. This is pretty common when you get a new administration coming in and once they get all their people in place, we highly expect the program to be moving forward. So, with this, we still encourage farmers to apply, they are still accepting applications, they just aren’t processing payments at this point.”
He went on to explain that this latest round of the program was extended out to contract farmers. He said that there were a lot of producers who ended up getting left out of the CARES Act and the first Coronavirus Food Assistance Program because they were raising animals under a contract for another farmer who owned the animals and couldn’t sign up. Since then the USDA announced that if contract farmers of broilers, turkeys, chicken eggs, laying hens, or hogs had a drop in revenue for 2020 because of the virus, they’re now eligible for assistance.
Nepveux wanted to remind farmers that the deadline’s coming up fast. “Newly eligible producers who need to submit a CFAP application, or producers who need to modify an existing one, have to do so by February 26th,” Neveux said. You can sign up or modify your application by contacting your local USDA service center or check out the CFAP website.
