American farmers will get an additional $14 billion in federal aid payments in 2020, on top of $35 billion already on offer this year, President Donald Trump announced Thursday on a visit to farm-heavy Wisconsin.
It will drive the latest round of ad hoc relief payments — money not connected to annual farm relief programs — to historic highs and could represent another big cash injection for Georgia’s large agricultural industry.
The new money will also be available to agribusiness left out of earlier rounds, including Georgia’s $4.5 billion broiler chicken industry, the country’s largest.
It comes at a critical time for Georgia farmers and could shore up support for the president in rural areas ahead of November’s election. Farmers in Georgia have been hit hard by years of stagnant income, bad weather, trade disruptions linked to tariffs on American crops — a result of Trump’s trade wars with other countries — and now the coronavirus.
Trump and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, a former Georgia governor, said the money is needed for food producers who continue to face hardship and costs associated with COVID-19. Earlier rounds of farm aid this year totaling $32 billion were for relief for the effects of coronavirus and trade impacts, and the government bought $3 billion of farm goods.
Georgia farmers can apply for the aid beginning Monday. Farms in Georgia received more money per applicant than any other state in 2019, when $14.5 billion in federal aid payments linked to the trade disruptions were disbursed, according to a government audit published earlier this week.
Democrats in Georgia and other parts of the country are trying to peel away some of the rural vote that has been largely Republican. Some sharply criticized Trump’s policies again Friday.
“Rural Georgians are hurting because Donald Trump failed to contain COVID-19, and now our farmers are paying a steep price as revenues drop across the state,” Georgia House Democratic Leader Bob Trammell of Luthersville said in a press release. “Farmers already lost business because of Trump’s failed trade war with China, but he keeps lying to the public and making this pandemic worse.”
Unveiling the new $14 billion in aid in central Wisconsin might help Trump hang on to rural voters that delivered that critical swing state to him in his 2016 win. He carried Wisconsin by just 0.8 percentage point.
Most of rural Georgia also voted Republican in 2016, but many local farmers have been hit hard by the effects of the coronavirus.
Dairy farmers were pouring out milk that they couldn’t sell this spring because schools closed down, said Jeffrey Harvey, the public policy director for the Georgia Farm Bureau. Production, consumption and transportation were affected, consumers changed purchasing patterns and prices were depressed for many crops.
Eighty-two percent of Georgia 862 farmers surveyed in May by the University of Georgia and the Georgia Farm Bureau said they expected to lose money because of COVID-19. The farmers who responded estimated an annual loss, on average, of $49,000.
Harvey said he expects the payments will not help farmers make a profit, but will rather keep them afloat. Georgia farmers applying for the new round of aid will have to show proof of harm, such as at least a 5% fall in commodity prices, he said.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office analyzed which states and counties got the highest payouts in 2019. That report, released Monday, showed farmers in a swath of Southern states from Georgia to Texas got the highest individual payments, with Georgia landing at No. 1 with $42,545 per applicant, compared to the average payment of $16,507 nationally. Georgia also led with payments per acre at $119, compared to $57 nationally.
Perdue, the current agriculture secretary and former Georgia governor, attracted criticism and questions from, among others, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, about perceived favoritism of the South and Georgia.
The Department of Agriculture defended the fairness of the payments, saying there was “zero” politics involved in the decisions. It said the areas of the country with the most price-damaged products, such as cotton and sorghum, received the highest payments. Georgia is the second-largest producer of cotton.
Though individual payments in the South were higher, the Midwest received more than 68% of the payments.
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