USDA Grant Funding for Meat Production

• Author: Jeffrey Simmons
• Posted: 2024-02-04

During the height of the COVID pandemic in America, the federal government gave out hundreds of billions in grants, and many experts claim that this money helped to alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans.

However, the grant funding just suddenly stopped around the time Joe Biden became President, and passing trillion-dollar spending bills in Congress became all the rage.

According Zippy Duvall, the President of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the federal government is once again getting back into grants, handing out USDA relief grants to expand the meat and poultry processing facilities in America.

These grants couldn't have come at a better time, seeing as most meats are up around 40% in costs now compared to the same time last year.

Some Industries Harder Hit Than Others

Not every industry in America deals the same with price increases. Although the prices of just about everything have gone up, farmers and meat producers are dealing with much higher costs altogether. They have to deal with inflation as it pertains to animal feed, water, labor costs, electricity, shipping, and much more. So while the Biden administration can claim that nationwide inflation is only just above 7%, the fact is that meat ends up costing about 40% more at the stores because that's the inflated rate that meat producers are paying for their entire system. This is why there needs to be a grant relief program for these meat and poultry processing industries, claims Zippy Duvall. There are different sorts of economic pressures placed on certain industries, and the meat producers in America have no choice but to pass off these inflated rates to customers, or else they're operating at a loss.

The American government is passing around a lot of blame for the higher price tag on everyday food items. They tried blaming former President Donald Trump for many months. Then they had a few weeks where they claimed that inflation was only "transitory" and would soon pass. When it just kept going up instead of passing, the government decided to blame Russia for rising prices, and this seems to be their current scapegoat. According to many in the meat industry, if only they'd stop talking about what caused the issue and just hand out some grants to the producers, many of the problems would be solved.

Very Nebulous Language

To date, no one really knows a lot of details about these proposed grants. It is known that the American Farm Bureau's president claimed that grant funding has been approved, but the exact details haven't been released as of yet. Though cynical people who are aware of the grants system are all too familiar with this sort of announcement. The government claims that grants will be handed out, but the rest of the details are scant. After a few months, people start to wonder where the grants are at, and why they're for so little money, to which the government replies that the grants were delivered as promised. The catch, of course, is that they were vague on how much grant spending would be available, and the exact time frame. This is something to which the working taxpayer in America has grown accustomed, as this is the same sort of thing that happened with COVID relief grants from the government.

The government put billions of dollars into a pool, claiming it was a grant pool for struggling restaurants. However, after only 15% of restaurants received funding, and many of those 15% found their money stuck in limbo, the government simply said that not all the money in the pool was for grants, and that grants weren't guaranteed. So, technically, the government was right again. They never seem to fall short on military spending for foreign conflict, but nobody really knows just how much the government is going to invest in its own people. What typically happens is that they'll pay out a fraction of what they appropriate, and then the money will just be forever missing; an unsolved mystery. The corporate media will certainly never hold them to account, and the average person will be called names if they bring the subject up.

From the average men and women in America who are struggling to buy food, to the farmers and meat producers, everyone is hoping for some relief grants to come in and alleviate the burden. They have been announced for the industry this week, but that's as much information as anyone has on the topic.