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CFAP payments lower than expected so far
The director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute says Coronavirus Food Assistance Program payouts to farmers so far have been below the expected amount.
Pat Westhoff is with the University of Missouri and tells Brownfield only a little more than $6 Billion of the available $16 Billion for the program has been paid out thus far.
“It’s not entirely clear to me all the reasons for that,” he said. “Whether it might be just a matter of producers not being able to file the appropriate paperwork because of issues with their local FSA offices or whether maybe there wasn’t quite as much of production eligible.”
He said payment limitation rules might also be causing less money to be paid out. Westhoff says the spread of where payments have gone is not what he expected.
“Cattle’s probably coming in maybe a little bit above its proportion of the expected total previously,” Westhoff said. “Whereas hogs are the other extreme where the payments to hog producers so far have been less than anticipated by quite a bit.”
But he said there is still plenty of time for more payments to be made. The deadline to apply for CFAP through the USDA is August 28.
