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Quick Fix
— Farmers can start applying for agricultural aid after Memorial Day, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said. Checks will start flowing to producers 7-10 days later.
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— President Donald Trump met with restaurant industry leaders at the White House on Monday. The administration opened the door to easing limits on how small businesses can use stimulus loans to avert layoffs.
— Ethanol supporters are (virtually) swarming the Hill today to make their case for coronavirus relief and other biofuel policies. The effort comes just a few days after the House passed a stimulus package including, for the first time, aid earmarked for biofuel production.
HAPPY TUESDAY, MAY 19! Welcome to Morning Ag, where we salute these “hyper-hygienic” hog farmers who were ahead of the curve on anti-coronavirus cleaning. Send tips to [email protected] and @ryanmccrimmon, and follow us @Morning_Ag.
Driving the Day
FARM AID TO LAUNCH AFTER MEMORIAL DAY: Farmers and ranchers seeking a lifeline from the Agriculture Department can sign up for a relief check starting a week from today, Perdue said Monday night during a “rural town hall” hosted by the network RFD-TV.
Timeline: The USDA chief said the application process will open on May 26 and money would start moving as soon as a week later. That means stimulus funding will finally reach the hard-hit industry two months after Congress passed the CARES Act in late March.
— The application window will remain open through August, Perdue said, but he expects most producers won’t wait that long to put in their paperwork for aid.
— But first: The department is expected to publish details of the final $16 billion payment package any day now, after OMB cleared the plan on Friday. Trump is also scheduled to deliver remarks about farmers and ranchers at 11 a.m. today at the White House.
More Perdue: The secretary also predicted that the current supply chain disruptions won’t cause long-term changes in the food system after the pandemic is over.
“I don’t think we need to look at doing different things in our food supply chain,” Perdue said, adding that he thinks high prices at grocery stores will level out as schools, restaurants, meatpacking plants and other businesses come back online.
TRUMP BACKS RESTAURANTS’ BID FOR LOOSER LOAN RULES: The president and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent positive signals to restaurant industry leaders seeking changes to the Paycheck Protection Program, which includes strict rules about how small businesses are allowed to use the emergency loans, reports Pro Financial Services’ Zachary Warmbrodt.
Currently, the government will forgive PPP loans after eight weeks if businesses use the funds to maintain their workforce. But restaurants have been lobbying Congress and the administration to give them more time to spend the money, along with more flexibility about how to use it (for now, 75 percent of the funds must be spent on payroll). There’s growing support among lawmakers for extending the timeline to 24 weeks.
— Making the change “should be easy,” Trump said on Monday, adding, “That’s like one of the easiest requests I’ve ever heard.”
— Mnuchin said officials are working on a “technical fix” that has bipartisan support in Congress, though he wasn’t sure if 24 weeks was the best window.
— Marvin Irby, interim president of the National Restaurant Association, said the industry has shed 8 million jobs and lost more than $240 billion in revenue because of the pandemic.
Small farmers and ranchers are also eligible for PPP loans, though ag producers initially struggled to access the funds amid a crush of interest from business in manufacturing, construction and many other industries.
BIOFUEL BACKERS’ ZOOM FLY-IN: Growth Energy, which represents ethanol producers and supporters, is hosting its first “virtual fly-in” this week to press Midwestern lawmakers on their coronavirus relief efforts, along with trade barriers and other biofuel issues, starting today.
The ethanol industry has been crushed by the drop in gasoline use, and more than half of all production has been idled since the pandemic started. But biofuel plants were left out of USDA’s aid package announced in mid-April, despite a furious lobbying push by the industry and corn-state lawmakers.
Congress is expected to pass another stimulus bill in the months ahead, and it’s likely to steer funding directly to biofuel plants. The House on Friday passed a $3 trillion aid package that would pay producers 45 cents per gallon based on a plant’s output through May 1, plus compensation for those that were forced to idle production for a full month, as we flagged for MA readers last week.
Emily Skor, Growth Energy’s CEO, said the House plan was a “signal that lawmakers understand the urgent need to rebuild the strength of America’s agricultural supply chain after half the U.S. biofuel industry was forced offline.”
SCOTUS watch: In other ethanol news, the Supreme Court rejected a request from refining giant Valero Energy to reassess whether the EPA should expand the number of companies that must comply with the Renewable Fuel Standard, writes Pro Energy’s Eric Wolff.
Trade Corner
EU AIMS TO STOP PROMOTING MEAT: The European Commission on Wednesday will unveil its “Farm to Fork” plan for a sustainable food system, the agricultural plank of its European Green Deal. One new policy in the platform is curbing government support for meat production and consumption, our POLITICO Europe colleagues report.
Agriculture accounts for 10.3 percent of the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 70 percent of those emissions come from livestock production, according to the draft framework. The proposal to stop “stimulating” the meat business was not included in a previous version of the food strategy.
The background: The Commission committed €200 million (roughly $218 million) in 2020 to promote European food and farm goods around the world, including €5 million specifically for beef and veal. But most plant-based meat alternatives aren’t eligible for promotional funding.
— Under the draft food plan, Brussels would review the promotional program to consider backing “sustainable production and consumption” in line with the bloc’s political priorities.
Row Crops
— Democrats and labor unions are pressuring the Trump administration to enforce worker safety policies as businesses reopen across the country. Federal workplace inspectors have received close to 4,000 coronavirus-related complaints but have yet to issue a single such citation, reports POLITICO’s Rebecca Rainey.
— Hurricanes and typhoons have intensified over the last 40 years, according to new research from federal scientists. The study from NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the first to show that tropical cyclones have grown stronger as planetary temperatures increased in recent decades. Pro Energy’s Zack Colman has the story.
— USDA authorized Colorado, Missouri and Wyoming to offer additional food assistance to low-income families with children who normally qualify for subsidized school meals. More than 30 states are now approved for the pandemic program. More from USDA.
— The EPA is rolling out $6 million to curb nitrogen runoff into the Chesapeake Bay from nearby ag operations. More than half the funds will go to Pennsylvania, the agency announced.
— OFW Law hired Phil Karsting, former administrator of USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, as senior policy adviser for its food and agriculture lobbying practice. Karsting was previously vice president of policy for World Food Program USA, and he worked at USDA during the Obama administration, per POLITICO Influence.
— Jerold Mande, a former USDA official, has joined the Center for Science in the Public Interest as senior advisor, the group announced. Mande was deputy undersecretary for food safety during the Obama administration, and he was most recently at Tufts University.
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