7:19 p.m. ET, June 9, 2020
The coronavirus food assistance program has processed $1.4 billion since mid-May
From CNN’s Dan Shepherd
A box of food part of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program sits at the distribution center of Coastal Sunbelt Produce in Laurel, Maryland, on Friday, May 15.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
According to the latest United States Department of Agriculture’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program payment report released Monday, $1.4 billion has been awarded across more than 80,000 applicants since the program was announced in mid-May.
USDA Commissioner Sonny Perdue said in a May 19 release the CFAP assistance program would provide up to $16 billion “in direct payments to deliver relief to America’s farmers and ranchers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.”
The payment report cites that 49 states and two territories had applicants for the aid; Rhode Island is the only state without any applications in the CFAP program, up to this week.
Applicants from states in the upper Midwest had the largest awards with crop farming in the “specialty” and “non-specialty” categories, including Illinois ($60.6 million), Iowa ($52.5 million), Nebraska ($45.2 million), Minnesota ($28.4 million) and Kansas ($20.5 million).
The livestock/cattle industries received the largest amounts of money, with more than $676.2 million, while crop farmers were awarded $392.9 million and dairy farmers collected just over $337 million.
One surprise in the June report is that two states and one territory have not received any money, despite multiple applicants listed in those locations.
Delaware had 73 applicants, the US Virgin Islands had seven applications, Alaska had three applications. The amount listed on the CFAP payment plan on June 8 is “$0.00” for each of these states and territory.
When asked about the lack of money going to these states and territory, a USDA spokesperson told CNN: “The number of CFAP applications shown on our weekly data reports include both approved applications as well as those that have been signed by producers but not yet approved by locally elected farmers who sit on the FSA county committee.”
The Farm Service Agency is the department within the USDA that handles the application process.
CNN has reached out to the Delaware Farm Bureau, the Alaska Farm Bureau and the Virgin Islands Department of Agriculture for comment, but has not heard back from any of these organizations at this time.