USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue Wednesday said that USDA has decided it can make a “minimal” payment to farmers under the Market Facilitation Program 2 (MFP 2) for cover crops that are planted on prevent plant acres.
However, he did not signal how much the payment would amount to and noted that the agency is close to announcing details of the MFP 2 effort.
“The reason we are close is the prevented-planting triggers are done,” he told reporters after speaking to the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives in Washington. “That was our purpose for being intentionally opaque about the plans and not having producers trying to farm the program. I think we are close to beginning disclosing some of these plans.”
Perdue said USDA will also “top off” prevent planting payments using money from the recently approved disaster aid package, but said the amount of increased payments will depend on how many prevent plan acres there are.
While many are touting the potential for farmer payments from MFP 2, crop insurance, the disaster package and being able to sell forage harvested from cover crops on prevent plant acres, Perdue stressed, “All those combined will not come up to what a farmer could have [earned] if they could have planted. Prevent plant is not a strategy. It's a fall-back safety mechanism."
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