USDA Rolls Our Additional Loans To Help Food Supply Weaknesses

"The pandemic exposed a number of weakness in our food supply chain and need for more support for expanded processing," noted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack when he recently announced the latest in a series of financial commitments to help strengthen the midpoints of the food chain.

"Today we're announcing the establishing of a loan guarantee program to reduce the risk to bankers and to others who are providing the financing for such things as mobile processing facilities, or cold storage capacity being expanded, or producer groups establishing a co-opted brand for to market their product."

Vilsack told reporters, in this case it's $100 million dollars of loan guarantees from the American Rescue Plan.

"We are confident that this $100 million dollars can be leveraged multiple times so we're looking at potentially hundreds of millions of dollars."

He said strengthening the nation's food chain will help bring about, "fair returns for our producers and fair prices at the checkout counter for our consumers."

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