When looking back on 2020, how is the year viewed by the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service?

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"The Coronavirus is one of the areas that shaped a lot of the activities of the ag marketing service," said AMS Undersecretary Greg Ibach. He explained that AMS was involved in adjustments made after the pandemic began disrupting the marketplace.

"We had to do a number of things especially as restaurants and food service shut down to be able to make regulatory adjustments to allow that food that was destined for food service to be able to move in to the retail sector because people were staying at home they had to eat at home they were going to the grocery store," he noted.

In addition, AMS oversaw purchase and delivery of goods for the Farmers to Families Food Box Program.

"We have distributed over 100 million boxes of food and invested more than $4 billion dollars in these efforts," Ibach said.

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