Meat, poultry, dairy and grain markets were all rocked by COVID-19 in the early months of 2020, and the ongoing repercussions from the pandemic injected massive uncertainty for farmers throughout the rest of the year. As with a variety of industries, agriculture was the beneficiary of government stimulus efforts coordinated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency.

In this episode we talk with the administrator of FSA, the arm of USDA tasked with delivering a variety of financial programs enacted by Congress and delivered through the Department, about the alphabet soup of programs designed to help mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 on the farm economy.

Richard Fordyce is a fourth-generation farmer from Bethany, Missouri, and has served as FSA Administrator since May of 2018 after serving as the state executive director for FSA in Missouri and as Missouri Director of Agriculture. In a conversation with Feedstuffs policy editor Jacqui Fatka, Fordyce explains the difference between the two Coronavirus Food Assistance Programs approved by Congress and how much of the more than $30 million allocated for the programs has been paid to farmers through mid-October.

For more information on this and other stories, visit  Feedstuffs online.
Follow Feedstuffs on Twitter @Feedstuffs, or join the conversation via Facebook.