County Farm Bureau Members:
Our Nebraska Farm Bureau (NEFB) family of county Farm Bureau volunteers, leaders, and staff are going through a great deal of uncertainty as COVID-19 (coronavirus) spreads across Nebraska. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted some of our most basic businesses and services. Nebraska Farm Bureau developed a COVID-19
webpage
loaded with resources to help farmers and ranchers navigate this unprecedented situation. Check out the webpage at
www.nefb.org/COVID-19
.
In this current atmosphere, Nebraska cities, particularly Omaha, Lincoln, surrounding suburbs, and now Grand Island have largely shut down. Still, farmers and ranchers are pressing ahead with the vital work of food production.
The Nebraska Farm Bureau’s mission to enrich the lives of Nebraska farm and ranch families and to enhance Nebraska agriculture is being carried out every day. We have been proactive in carrying out two important priorities:
- Continuing to provide service to our members;
- Keeping our members and employees safe from the virus.
The financial strain on the farm and ranch is tremendous as we continue to watch the prices of our agriculture commodities fall. Price declines of 15-25 percent are not uncommon. To help address low commodity prices, Nebraska Farm Bureau has been taking actions and working endlessly on the policy front to:
- Secure up to $23.5 billion in the federal aid package that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) can use to help farmers and ranchers, of which a dedicated portion of those funds are targeted for livestock producers.
- Clarify that Nebraska ag producers are included in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses in the aid package.
- Work with our partners in the ethanol industry to search for policy measures that would help skid the slide in ethanol and corn prices while helping assure supplies of dried distillers grains are available.
- Work with our Nebraska congressional delegation to urge the State Department to make regulatory changes to make available more seasonal farm workers coming through the H-2A program.
- Assure agriculture and food worker definitions are included in the essential services guidelines for state and local officials.
- Work with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, to help the department address the impacts of COVID-19 on such things as inspections and livestock auction barns.
- Work with local, state, and federal officials about the additional risk factors facing rural Nebraska due to a shortage of doctors and health treatment facilities.
- Communicate, sometimes daily, with Nebraska’s congressional delegation and with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and his staff.
- Ask Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue to address key issues to aid farms and ranches feeling COVID-19 pressures.
- Request the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation to address any potential price fixing or market manipulation activity that have resulted from recent extreme market shifts due to a packing plant fire in Holcomb, Kansas in August 2019 and more recently due to COVID-19.
- Analyze the Paycheck Protection Program and developed a Q&A guide for farmers and ranchers. (As of this writing funds for this program have been depleted. Nebraska Farm Bureau is pushing for additional funds to give farmers and ranchers more time to apply).
Social Distancing and Direct Health Measures (DHM)
We continue to urge our members and staff to adhere to the governor’s announced DHMs that include social distancing of 6-feet, the closing of dining areas in bars and restaurants, and limiting public gatherings to 10 people or less. As we communicated before, NEFB took steps to protect the health and welfare of our employees asking them to work from home, avoid meetings, and to adhere to the DHMs.
NEFB’s operations and advocacy work continues in full force even though our functionality and programming has changed considerably. This “work remotely” policy has forced us to find unique ways to provide information that will help you on your farms and ranches. We have put together several LIVE events from Telephone Health Town Hall meetings with Farm Bureau members to Facebook LIVE events offering our members thoughts and viewpoints from experts. We will continue to provide these services to help you navigate through these challenging times.
Summary:
The livelihood of our members and employees are of the utmost priority. If you need to reach a member of the NEFB team, please contact us via email. You can find a listing of our NEFB Staff Directory
here
.
Please feel free to contact either one of us if you have questions, concerns, or input as we deal with these unprecedented times.
