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Northey defends Market Facilitation Program

Undersecretary Bill Northey is defending the Market Facilitation Program against critics who say USDA’s formula picks winners and losers.

Speaking to Brownfield at the NAFB Convention in Kansas City, Northey says the Department did a good job analyzing who was impacted by the trade war and is trying to get dollars to those areas.

“Now our other challenge is everybody out there that would like to criticize the program might actually choose a different emphasis. They’d like their producers to get a little bit more money.”

Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, the Ranking Member of the Senate Ag Committee, recently released a report that claims MFP unfairly benefits big farms and producers in the southeast.

“In this case, although the highest payment rates per-acre or per-county are in the South, the highest dollar amounts will go to the Midwest because we have more acres there and more producers there.”

Northey says the trade aid program was put together to be fairly easy for producers to participate in, straightforward in how it’s delivered, and not take two years to stand up.