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USDA announces small family farm initiative

USDA has ten new agriculture-related policy proposals designed to help serve family farm operations.

Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins spoke in Nebraska Monday, where she announced USDA’s Family Farmer First Initiative as part of the Make Agriculture Great Again agenda. “I think there’s been a lot of conversation around what and how we keep America strong, how we bring prosperity back to rural America, and at the base of all of that, the foundation is our small, family farmer.”

Rollins says the USDA must change the way it does business, and the new initiative includes ten policy pieces. “Number one, ensuring a simple and streamlined and transparent tools that we have through USDA and across the government and application. Number two, ensuring reliable access to credit.”

Rollins says the initiative also prevents using farmland for solar installations, ensuring farms can be passed on to the next generation, and putting the focus of USDA back on the farmer and rancher.  She says USDA will also be working to help farmers get access to the labor they need. “President Trump has talked about that in his recent cabinet meeting, actually, two cabinet meetings ago. My counterpart at Labor, Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is hyper-focused on this as well through the H-2A program but it’s time to take a wholesale look at the labor force in our agriculture industries.”

Rollins says USDA will also enhance access to risk management and business planning tools, enhancing farmer access to educational resources, and expanding USDA’s small farm toolkit.  The Secretary also wants to ensure the USDA definitions of farm size reflect modern day realities to help with grant applications,

Rollins says she’s listening to farmers to make sure USDA can help them maintain a sustainable and prosperous future for the ag community.  USDA statistics show about 86% of U.S. farms are small family operations.