U.S. disaster aid won't cover crops drowned by Midwest floods

[turbinetree]

Politics
April 2, 2019 / 1:10 AM / Updated an hour ago
Tom Polansek

MALVERN, Iowa (Reuters) - The Black Hawk military helicopter flew over Iowa, giving a senior U.S. agriculture official and U.S. senator an eyeful of the flood damage below, where yellow corn from ruptured metal silos spilled out into the muddy water.

And there’s nothing the U.S. government can do about the millions of bushels of damaged crops here under current laws or disaster-aid programs, U.S. Agriculture Under Secretary Bill Northey told a Reuters reporter who joined the flight.

The USDA has no mechanism to compensate farmers for damaged crops in storage, Northey said, a problem never before seen on this scale. That’s in part because U.S. farmers have never stored so much of their harvests, after years of oversupplied markets, low prices and the latest blow of lost sales from the U.S. trade war with China - previously their biggest buyer of soybean exports.

The USDA last year made $12 billion in aid available to farmers who suffered trade-war losses, without needing Congressional approval. The agency has separate programs that partially cover losses from cattle killed in natural disasters, compensate farmers who cannot plant crops due to weather, and help them remove debris left in fields after floods.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-iowa/u-s-disaster-aid-wont-cover-crops-drowned-by-midwest-floods-idUSKCN1RE0BU

Be prepared for price hikes in food costs and animal costs.......................

[Iliyah]

1. Bullshit . .

but the fucking "wall".

[watoos]

2. Now, simply giving money to farmers,

sounds to me a lot like Socialism.

[CousinIT]

3. +1000 n/t

[IndyOp]

4. I fear that we'll soon have an escalated risk of farmer suicides - similar to that in India.

Older men are in a high risk category for suicide. Imagine losing a farm that your family has worked for generations.