The National Farmers Union has sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue urging USDA to follow a public and transparent process as it relates to market facilitation program payments. Nebraska Farmers Union President John Hansen says the way the MFP has been distributed and allotted has been a concern for Farmers Union since it began.
He says because there’s not been a transparent and public process on the MFP payments, it’s created a public perception problem, both with U.S. taxpayers and with our foreign trading partners as to whether they meet WTO requirements.
Hansen says Farmers Union intends to share their MFP concerns with the Ag Secretary when he attends their national convention coming up in a few weeks from now.
NFU noted that the first two rounds of MFP was used as a quick fix to the tariff retaliation problem and spent $14.5 billion in a matter of months and didn’t tackle larger problems in the farm safety net.
