Farmers Now Eligible for Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Emergency Grants
On Friday, April 27, the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act received a new infusion of funding from Congress that now includes relief for farmers following a successful effort by farm advocates, including Public Justice, who called on Congress to ensure that small farmers could qualify for critical Economic Injury Disaster Loans and emergency grants through the Small Business Administration. The SBA will allocate this relief on a first come, first served basis, so it is critical that farmers act now to apply and secure these resources. Public Justice recommends that farmers apply through a community bank rather than a large bank based on recent reports that community banks have been more responsive to the needs of small businesses.
Unfortunately, small farmers were left out of the first round of coronavirus relief aid, which sadly reflects the current administration’s favor towards Big Business over Main Street. In March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to support agriculture and businesses hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Small Business Administration declared farmers ineligible for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, another act in the trend of “feed the world” policy outcomes favoring corporate-controlled agriculture at the expense of small farmers. It was only six months ago that USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said the quiet part out-loud. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” he confessed at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin during the year that 800 small Wisconsin dairy farms went out of business while gigantic factory farms thrived.
For too long, economic policy in the United States has favored an export-driven, corporate-controlled model of commodity agriculture and factory farms that has allowed our rural communities to decline in favor of a broken food system. At Public Justice, we support small, independent farmers because the health and well-being of our rural communities starts with farmers. Now more than ever, while we respond to the existential threats of a world-wide pandemic and the climate crisis, we have an opportunity to shift policy priorities to empower farmers to provide healthy, regenerative food that restores our communities and planet. Because we are all in this together.
