Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins Announces New Emergency Commodity Assistance Program During Commodity Classic
During her speech before a large crowd at Commodity Classic in Denver, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a change in policy regarding the process for distributing disaster relief funds for farmers.
“Today, I’m proud to announce that the Economic Assistance Program will be called the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program—ECAP,” said Secretary Rollins during her address to U.S. corn and soybean producers at Commodity Classic.
She says USDA is making changes in order to get the relief package passed by Congress late last year into the hands of farmers in need across the U.S.
“And given the dire state of the farm economy—in the last two weeks since I’ve been on the job, we have been working very diligently and as quickly as humanly possible, understanding the urgency of getting these funds out the door,” she added.
Rollins went into further detail about the new program.
“ECAP is the new program to help us distribute that $30 billion in funds that Congress passed in December. They gave us 90 days to start distributing that first $10 billion in economic assistance, and we are on track to beat that and get that money starting to move immediately in the next few weeks,” said Rollins.
She said USDA has created a more streamlined process to avoid a bureaucratic bottleneck and get funds to producers who need them as quickly as possible.
“FSA (USDA’s Farm Service Agency) will use the 2024 acreage reporting data you previously filed to initiate that application process. I mean, this is just common sense. Why wasn’t this happening before? Now we’re moving into the new era of common sense at USDA,” she said.
Rollins added that USDA is using fair and transparent standards for calculating payments to producers.
“It will not be based on DEI metrics, but instead will be based on need regardless of your skin color or geographic location,” said Rollins.
CLICK BELOW for Hoosier Ag Today’s radio news report from Commodity Classic in Denver.
