OHIO — Through the USDA’s Farm and Food Workers Relief program, industry workers could receive up to $600 through grants totaling $700 million.
“That $700 million the USDA is distributing will go to workers in meatpacking plants or on farms. Think about folks handling the nation’s produce [and] people who were hit hard by the pandemic early on. The meatpacking, in particular, was among the sectors most directly affected by the pandemic in its early first months, while we were still figuring out how to keep people protected with social distancing and those kinds of things, so the workers are now going to be eligible for $600 in grants that will be distributed by a variety of different state agencies and nonprofit groups to help them recoup some of the costs with purchasing personal protective equipment or maybe be able to offset the costs of some unpaid medical leave or child care due to illness related to COVID-19,” Spectrum News 1 agriculture expert Andy Vance said.
The program is funded by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 and is part of USDA’s Build Back Better initiative.
Vance said this program is in its early stages and people interested in receiving the funding should pay close attention to the USDA for more information on how to apply.
“The money will be distributed through state agencies or nonprofit groups. Those groups will apply for the grants. They will come up with their own programs and then the USDA will distribute the money, and then those groups will find eligible workers and so you would apply through a state agency or a nonprofit organization. It could be a meatpacking industry organization. It could be a state agency like the Ohio Department of Agriculture,” he said.
According to the USDA, “$20 million of this amount [$700 million] has been set aside for at least one pilot program to support grocery workers and test options for reaching them in the future.”
“I think that would be one that would definitely benefit workers in Ohio,” Vance said. “It will definitely trickle down to workers in Ohio in a few sectors, maybe not the meatpacking industry as much as it will in some of the larger states.”
The USDA said a separate $700 million in grants will also be announced for producers, processors, farmers markets, distributors and seafood processors and vessels impacted by the coronavirus.
