Lawmakers and state representatives also said some states were presented with the options and given only about a week to decide. “Instead of following the law, [Agriculture] Secretary [Brooke] Rollins is forcing states to make a rushed decision, without all the necessary information or parameters, that pits one essential relief program against another with no regard for how it impacts our farmers,” Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), who spearheaded getting the Block Grant funding into the legislation, said in a statement.
Having to decide quickly is particularly challenging, because the details of how the SDRP will be implemented are not yet available, Hackett said. “USDA has given no guidance about what that option will look like.”
In the past, however, Hackett said the USDA has given out money through SDRP primarily by automatically enrolling farmers who already receive commodity or crop insurance payments. By design, that means larger, commodity farms have gotten the bulk of the money. Under President Joe Biden, the USDA added an option that calculated losses based solely on farm revenue records, which helped give small, diversified farms access to the money, he said, but the approach has gotten a lot of pushback, primarily from Republicans. So, it’s unclear which path the current USDA will take.
In response to questions from Civil Eats, a USDA spokesperson noted that they had extended the Block Grant deadline for one state, Connecticut, that objected to the tight turnaround. The spokesperson then referred Civil Eats to an agency statement stating that Rollins has been working to deliver disaster aid to farmers “quickly and responsibly” and that the agency is offering flexible options and “clear guidance to avoid duplicating existing federal programs.”
“Congressional Democrats are playing politics with disaster aid, withholding critical funding from farmers to manufacture controversy and blame the Trump Administration—when in reality, they’re pushing to misuse taxpayer dollars,” USDA director of communications Seth W. Christensen said in the statement. (Link to this post.)
