WASHINGTON, D.C.— Senior Member of the House Agriculture Committee U.S. Representative Austin Scott (GA-08) today questioned the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack during a committee hearing to review the state of the rural economy.

During the hearing, Rep. Scott asked the Secretary to address the effects of labor and trucking shortages in getting products to and from farms, provide an update on disaster assistance distribution, and clarify initiatives from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).

Rep. Scott’s full remarks can be found here or below.

Chairman David Scott: “The Gentleman from Georgia Mr. Austin Scott is recognized now for five minutes.”

Rep. Austin Scott: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Vilsack, I have talked to some of my chemical distributors, about the crop protection products, and they’re telling me that the raw materials are in the country but the labor shortages are what is creating the back up and the challenges with actually getting a product to the warehouses for the farms. Is that consistent with what you're hearing from the people at the USDA?”

Sec. Vilsack: “Well we are certainly concerned about the lack of truck drivers, which is why we're working with the Department of Labor and encouraged by their efforts to create an apprenticeship program and to speed up the process to get people behind the wheel and to work with states to issue C.D.L. licenses as quickly as possible; so, it is an area that we are concerned about.”

Rep. Austin Scott: “I think they're talking about shortages in labor in manufacturing as well as trucking shortages among other things. It does concern me that in many cases I feel like people don't recognize how important the timeliness is with regard to application of crop protection and crop promotion and fertilizer products to get the yields that our farmers depend on, and we all depend on for our food supply in this country. And so I just hope you and USDA will stay on the Department of Transportation making sure that they understand and at the Department of Labor making sure they understand that when we have to have these crop protection products in the field, you know, putting it on two or three weeks late doesn’t work. You were given an additional ten billion dollars this past fall for disaster assistance for extreme weather in 2020 and 2021. Can you give us an update or any details on where the distribution of those funds stands?”

Sec. Vilsack: “Yes. Let's talk about the seven hundred fifty million dollars that was allocated for the livestock industry. We're going to take a look at the process by which we can use existing data from the livestock forage program to facilitate payments in the hope is that those payments will make it to livestock producers a sometime this spring. The expectation is that there may be additional need a second tranche of resources be made available with a more detailed application, but we're trying to simplify the process so we can get resources to these farmers as quickly as possible. On the grain side, we hope to use NAP data and RMA crop insurance data to essentially create a pre-filled out application, which will speed up the process of the first tranche of resources to those producers and then a second tranche for shell losses in areas that were covered, folks who didn't have NAP coverage or didn’t have crop insurance coverage; so, the goal here is to try to get these payments out this spring.”

Rep. Austin Scott: “This spring. So, hopefully by the end of April then.”

Sec. Vilsack: “April, May, sometime in that time frame. The key here, Representative, is to make sure we get it done as quickly as possible, which is why we’re simplifying the process of trying to use existing data to speed up the process.”

Rep. Austin Scott: “One last question: the Commodity Credit Corporation. I know there's a tremendous amount of discussion about climate-smart agriculture and the commodity credit corporation. It's my understanding that a billion dollars in CCC funds are being used for climate-smart agriculture in forestry. How does this fit under the pretty specific enumerated purposes of the CCC plus specific authority under the charter act we’ll be using? Can you give us more details on this initiative?”

Sec. Vilsack: “As you well know, the commodity credit corporation in part is designed to provide for the promotion of commodities, and what we're hearing and seeing from the food industry is the need for climate smart commodities for sustainably produced commodities and which they can ensure their consumers that what they're purchasing is not harmful to the environment; so, we want to be able to help producers create those climate-smart commodities. It falls under, it’s either section four or section five of the CCC, and we are very confident that we have the capacity and ability to use this without jeopardizing any of the other needs or reasons for the CCC. This will give—and it is actually the farm groups and food groups that basically proposed and suggested this in the food-and-farm alliance document on climate-smart agriculture suggesting the need for demonstration in pilot projects funded through the CCC, and we're following the prescription of groups like the American Farm Bureau in and their advocacy for this; so, we feel very confident we have the legal grounds based on the fact that we will be promoting climate-smart commodities.”

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