Farmers are not being prioritized, to say the least, in COVID-19 response

This article summarizes a bunch of issues related to the pandemic. It’s from March 25, and “a slush fund type bailout for global corporations and Wall Street” is pretty much what was in fact delivered.

Farmers were already struggling to make ends meet prior to the COVID-19 crisis. For more than six years, farmers have been managing low incomes, rising costs, increasing debt and bankruptcy, volatile export markets (exacerbated by President Trump’s tariff fights) and a series of extreme weather events tied to climate change. Now, the fast-moving, unprecedented COVID-19 situation is creating new disruptive challenges for farmers and our food system. - IATP

This is from an email I got from Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), specifying some of what's in the package. You can decide for yourself, how much is actually likely to help traditional farmers, and how much is just more handouts to Big Ag.

 $9.5 billion dedicated disaster fund to help farmers who are experiencing financial losses from the coronavirus crisis, including targeted support for specialty crop farmers, dairy and livestock farmers, and local food producers.

$14 billion to fund the Farm Bill's farm safety net through the Commodity Credit Corporation.

Eligibility for farmers and agricultural and rural businesses to receive up to $10 million in small business interruption loans from eligible lenders, including Farm Credit institutions, through the Small Business Administration. Repayment forgiveness will be provided for funds used for payroll, rent or mortgage, and utility bills.

$3 million to increase capacity at the USDA Farm Service Agency to meet increased demand from farmers affected by the coronavirus crisis.

Here's a take on the "farmers or Big Ag" query.

Trump plan for farmers would make things even worse

I've pretty much run out of variants of "shamefully underreported and underemphasized in corporate 'news' media."

Presidential budgets, released annually, are aspirational documents—they display an administration’s intentions and goals, but are typically considered “dead on arrival” in Congress, which ultimately sends its own federal spending proposal to the White House. This year’s version, which has no chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, sends a jarring message to a key Donald Trump constituency: large-scale farmers who rely heavily on federal programs.

The proposed budget calls for a 31 percent cut to a program that subsidizes crop insurance, a key support for corn and soybean farmers during extended periods of low prices, such as the one currently in effect. This, even though Trump enjoyed strong farm-country support in 2016 and loves to flatter “our Great Patriot Farmers,” as he once put it on Twitter. The budget would also slice about 10 percent—$9.1 billion over 10 years—from the US Department of Agriculture’s conservation programs, which provide farmers with incentives to use practices that keep soil in place and reduce water pollution. - Mother Jones

Democrats bear some responsibility for the farm crisis, too

The whole system is messed up, though Trump and his allies are certainly making it worse than it's ever been. Or at least since the era of wholly unregulated exploitation, leading up to the Dust Bowl days.

In recent years, consolidated agribusinesses have translated their rising profits into formidable political power. They have successfully weakened or killed many measures that would have limited their control over farmers’ lives and livelihoods, including fighting laws that would give farmers the right to repair their own equipment, something that overzealous copyright protections have prevented them from doing. When these and other nasty practices get too much attention, Big Ag wields its considerable weight to silence critics, whether that means getting a newspaper cartoonist fired or suing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to close a public comment period on a proposed merger.

Over the past few decades, Democrats have too often either supported the policies that got us here, or fallen short in resisting them. - AlterNet

China is not loading up on U.S. farm products

Yeah, guess who got totally suckered again.

In a humiliating (July 11) statement, Trump was forced to admit that he was wrong when he promised farmers that China would soon buy large quantities of American agricultural products.

Trump was reduced to groveling, essentially begging China to start buying products from U.S. farmers.

"China is letting us down in that they have not been buying the agricultural products from our great Farmers that they said they would," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Hopefully they will start soon!" - Shareblue

Though I don't often link to Politico, this one is important: "Trump's trade wars thrust farmers into desperation loans."