Federal

Today, Secretary Tom Vilsack announced how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to implement the $3.7 billion Congress appropriated for disaster aid in calendar year 2022. The Emergency Relief Program (ERP) and Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) will help assist crop and livestock producers who suffered losses due to qualifying natural disasters in 2022. To facilitate the process, the ... Read More »

By Zach Ducheneaux Administrator, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency In January, we announced two new programs designed to assist producers who experienced revenue losses from 2020 and 2021 natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic. These programs are revenue-based and feel a little different from our regular programs, but the goal is to better support farmers. Both the Emergency Relief ... Read More »

From agriculture.com Production prospects for the U.S. winter wheat crop are the worst in recent memory in core areas of the Great Plains following a three-year drought, farmers and crop experts said. “I don’t know how to put it into words how bad it is,” said farmer Gary Millershaski in southwest Kansas, among the areas hit hardest by drought. He ... Read More »

National Association of Wheat Growers President and Klamath Falls, OR wheat farmer Brent Cheyne, testified in front of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Commodities, Risk Management, and Trade during the “Commodity Programs, Credit, and Crop Insurance – Part 1: Producer Perspectives on The Farm Safety Net” hearing. “With the rising input costs, decreasing net farm income, and the smallest winter ... Read More »

National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) President and Klamath Falls, Ore., wheat farmer Brent Cheyne, testified in front of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities, Risk Management, and Credit where he joined the “Producer Perspectives on the 2023 Farm Bill” hearing. Cheyne highlighted NAWG’s primary farm bill priorities, including the importance of maintaining and enhancing crop insurance, both ... Read More »

After peaking at 6.8 million farms in 1935, the number of U.S. farms and ranches fell sharply through the early 1970s. Rapidly falling farm numbers in the mid-20th century reflect the growing productivity of agriculture, increased mechanization, and increased nonfarm employment opportunities. Since 1982, the number of U.S. farms has continued to decline, but much more slowly. In 2022, there ... Read More »

Join the National Association of Wheat Growers’ (NAWG) advocacy campaign to engage with legislators on increasing Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) programs authorized in the farm bill. MAP’s authorized funding has not changed since 2006, and FMD funding has remained the same since 2002, so inflation and sequestration have significantly eroded the ability to compete with other ... Read More »

U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) and the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) today praised the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) for submitting a counter-notification on India’s wheat and rice subsidies to the WTO April 6, 2023. The filing on the WTO website can be seen here. Like another filing on the same commodities in 2018, this U.S. ... Read More »

From the Capital Press There’s something fishy about the “mediation” taking place at the White House. This mediation, which is held in secret, is an effort by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to come up with a plan for the four lower Snake River dams. Read the rest of the article ... Read More »

The Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG) joined with other Pacific Northwest agricultural stakeholders in sending a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, outlining concerns over increasing rhetoric at the federal level on breaching the lower Snake River dams and highlighting the importance of the entire Columbia-Snake River System to the U.S. “… We are increasingly concerned that the USG ... Read More »