Biden to devote $2.1 bln of new funds to strengthen US food supply chain.
The Biden Administration on Wednesday will announce $2.1 billion in new funding to bolster food supply chains, including initiatives to expand small- and mid-sized processing plants, according to a US Department of Agriculture official.
Funds will also be used to finance new infrastructure such as cold storage facilities and to assist farmers shifting to organic production, the official said.
A nationwide shortage of baby formula following the shutdown of a single Abbott Labs production facility, empty grocery shelves during early phases of the Covid pandemic and soaring food prices over the past year have underscored weaknesses in the country’s food supply chains.
Grocery prices in April were up 10.8 percent from a year earlier, the highest annual increase since November 1980, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack plans to focus on the importance of moving US food supplies away from dominance by a few highly concentrated businesses and addressing climate change challenges in announcing a “framework for strengthening supply chains.”
“A transformed food system is part of how we as a country become more resilient,” Vilsack will say, according to prepared remarks.
Vilsack will announce initiatives including $600 million in assistance for independently owned supply-chain infrastructure such as cold storage
It's new funding in the sense of money given to those projects but it is originally from the COVID-19 relief and other legislation. So it's not from some new bill that needs to be passed.
ReplyDeleteFunding for the initiatives will come from the Biden-backed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan Congress passed last year “and other relief legislation,” according to advance m
If the government were serious about alleviating food concerns.... the Democrats would win BIG points from across the isle if they enshrined "right to food" laws and provided federal exemptions for small scale food production so they could be sold at farmers markets, from the farm, and to local grocers, and prevent states and towns from actually preventing "family scale" farming.
ReplyDeleteSome states have protections, other states have very limited cottage laws. And a lot of areas actively prevent people from raising their own food at a reasonable, household scale (HOAs banning chickens, rabbits, gardens, etc, townships demanding multiple acres for a single goat, states trying to pass bills making animal breeding a sex crime, bans on pelts and other by-products, other inane BS).
There is enough under-the-table food production already occurring around communities across the US that an enormous amount of the pressure to deliver food could be lifted. And despite regulations, you never hear about people getting sick because the processing scale is such that the contamination risk is extremely small.
Selling produce or meat, making less than $200,000 a year, should be as easy as getting NPIP certified. Get inspected, get proper labels and lot tracking, have your well/water tested annually, and send samples each quarter for lab testing. The end. No need for anything more than that.
Big mega farms will still be needed but it shouldn't be illegal or banned by your community to grow your own peas and tomatoe
I don’t know how it is in the US, but where I’m from this means that poorly run corporations are given millions of dollars so they can continue to earn “profits” but they don’t change anything about how the businesses are run, and the executives pay themselves huge bonuses. Is that how it works in the US as well?
Deleteits in the article: "Vilsack will announce initiatives including $600 million in assistance for independently owned supply-chain infrastructure such as cold storage facilities and refrigerated trucks. The infrastructure aid will come on top of funding Biden announced earlier this year to assist expansion of independent processors in the highly concentrated meatpacking industry.
ReplyDeleteThe USDA also will announce $400 million to create regional food business centers to support small- and mid-sized farms and food processors, $300 million to assist farms transitioning to organic production and a $155 million increase for a program to promote healthy options in “food deserts underserved by grocery stores.”
the assistance for farms to go organic is a bit iffy but i know thats a touchy topic so not gonna go there lol