Sonny Perdue details relief plans at Washington Conference
Michael Muzyk, president of Bronx, N.Y.-based Baldor Specialty Foods, opened the second day of the virtual United Fresh Washington Conference with a message of the importance of the restaurant industry and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on it.
Muzyk said the fresh-produce industry must ensure its message is not forgotten amid the fast news cycle.
“We must make sure we are fighting for the voices that cannot be heard. The federal government is the largest employer in America. Second to that, collectively, is independent restaurants across America. They are the backbone of this country. They are what this country was built on,” Muzyk said. “We cannot let them fail. They must not fail. They will not fail.”
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue detailed the highs and lows of federal programs created to help growers and distributors suffering from the crisis with a dramatic drop in sales, labor shortages and extra costs in creating safe work environments.
The Farmers to Families Food Box Program was a “food miracle,” that impressed President Donald Trump so much that the administration added $1 billion to the $3-billion program in August. While there are critics to the way the program started, others say it has kept companies afloat.
The program has delivered almost 95 million boxes as of Sept. 22, according to the USDA.
“This is not rescued food. This is top of the line food that anyone of us would like to eat,” Perdue said.
Flexibility waivers have helped distributors divert produce prepared for foodservice to go to schools for curbside pickup programs.
Proponents have requested that funding for school and food-insecure initiatives continue through the end of the school year in 2021, but Perdue was skeptical.
His calculated guess is the summer school feeding program and the community feeding program will probably last through the end of December, but this hasn’t been decided yet.
Finally, Perdue explained more about the Coronavirus Farmers Assistance Program 2.0, or CFAP 2, which has 49 more specialty crops eligible for coverage than the first CFAP.
Specialty crops, compared to other food commodities, had a tougher time proving eligibility for the program payments, said Perdue and Tom Stenzel, president and CEO of United Fresh.
“With CFAP 2, we’ve taken a sales approach,” Perdue said. “For those people who can document their sales in 2019, and the decrease in 2020, they’d be eligible to come in and apply for help through the CFAP 2 program.”
The program will keep using the 5% trigger in CFAP 1 for larger commodities that have price discovery mechanisms already in place, he said. For others not eligible, there’s a per-acre price.
This more flexible approach fits the specialty crops industry better and should allow more access, Stenzel said.
In the general session on Sept. 23, representatives from Joe Biden’s and Trump’s campaigns will discuss how the industry can benefit under their administration. The conference continues through Sept. 25 with a virtual March on Capitol Hill, including about 50 video meetings with politicians.
“I think if the crisis and pandemic have taught us anything this year, it’s never been more important for our industry to have a strong voice here in Washington D.C.,” Stenzel said.
To that end, Muzyk paraphrased President John F. Kennedy:
“’Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer. Let us seek the right answer. Let us not seek to put blame on what’s occurred in the past. But let us seek to own our responsibilities in the future,’” said Muzyk, chairman of the board at United Fresh. “That resonates with me today.”
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