NEWS
from
The Vermont
Congressional Delegation
Fri., Sept. 27, 2002
USDA,
Finally, Says It Is ALMOST Ready To Begin Payments Under
New National Dairy Program
(FRIDAY) –
After vigorous complaints from the Vermont Congressional
Delegation about how – and how long – the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) is taking to begin payments under the new
national dairy program, a USDA official told the delegation
members Friday that the agency expects to begin issuing
partial payments on Oct. 15. Agriculture Secretary Ann
Veneman had told Sen. Patrick Leahy at a hearing last week she
expected the payments to begin sometime in October. The
Vermont state director of USDA’s Farm Service Agency Friday
was able to be more specific.
The startup
of payments has been anxiously awaited by Vermont’s dairy
farmers, who are facing the lowest milk prices in ten
years. Prices plummeted by nearly $4 per hundredweight
of milk last December and have fallen virtually each month
since then. Milk prices have been this low only three
times in the last 25 years. Many producers also are
facing higher feed costs due to both drought and flooding and
to higher feed corn prices.
The national
dairy program was championed by the Vermont Congressional
Delegation – Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Jim Jeffords, and Rep.
Bernie Sanders – and was included in the Farm Bill over the
objections of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other
Administration officials. The bill became law on
May 13.
The law
required USDA to begin enrolling producers in the program in
July and to issue the first payments to producers by Oct.
1. USDA failed to begin the signup on time and did not
allow producers to enroll until Aug. 13.
In August
Leahy, Jeffords and Sanders wrote to Agriculture Secretary
Veneman, urging her to avoid further delays and to do all
possible to meet the Oct. 1 deadline for making
payments. Last week Leahy grilled Veneman on USDA’s
handling of the new dairy program during a Senate Agriculture
Committee hearing. Veneman said USDA would not likely
meet the Oct. 1 deadline, but she assured Leahy that she would
do everything possible to make the payments sometime in
October.
Leahy
said: “The Administration has been slow-walking putting
the dairy program into action. Farmers don’t have the
time that USDA is wasting. Prices have fallen so low
that the public pays more for bottled water than a farmer gets
for his milk, and this latest promise is one that USDA had
better keep.”
Jeffords
said: “As milk prices continue to cast a dark cloud over
the dairy industry, today’s announcement is a ray of
light. This is welcome news for our farmers, who have
been struggling to make ends meet. Perhaps this news
will allow farmers to open their mail without the fear that
they will just see more bills.”
Sanders
said: “At a time when milk prices are disastrously low,
it is good news that USDA is finally responding to the
pressure that the delegation has been putting on them to get
this much-needed money out to farmers as quickly as
possible. Even so, we must continue working to solve the
root problems that are pushing dairy prices so low and driving
family farmers off the land.”
# # # # #
|