Wednesday, the first Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry Committee hearing of the 118th Congress focused on the 2023 Farm Bill. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) questioned the Honorable Jenny Moffitt, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs and the Honorable Alexis Taylor, USDA Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs on local food production and decreasing reliance on China. Brown, the first Ohioan to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee in nearly 50 years, highlighted his Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), which was established in the 2018 Farm Bill, and ways to strengthen the program.
“The pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of long global supply chains and need for more local and regionally-produced food,” said Brown during the hearing. “I have long been a champion of local food, and I’m proud to have played a role in creating the Local Agriculture Market Program, or ‘LAMP’ in the last farm bill. LAMP was a great step toward strengthening local and regional systems, but there’s more we can do to support local producers.”
Under Secretary Moffitt thanked Senator Brown for his leadership on the creation of LAMP, agreed on the importance of the program and shared upcoming adjustments to the application process.
“Senator Brown, Thank you for your leadership on the Local Agriculture Market Program. As you said, at the height of the pandemic, we saw how important local and regional supply chains are and the LAMP program is particularly valuable in building those bridges and building the connections… so that we can get more products grown locally, produced locally into the local food system,” said Moffit. “I really want to thank you for that question and for the leadership in the 2018 Farm Bill directing the Agricultural Marketing Service to work on this. I'm really proud to say that as we get toward the next round, the 2023 round, that the LAMP grants we will be adding a new component, a much more streamlined component for organizations, for producers, for those who are interested in applying for the LAMP grant to be able to have much more, easier access in a streamlined application process.”
Brown asked Under Secretary Taylor about the barriers to using the Market Access Program to further diversify away from China as a market.
“These dollars are so effective and important to developing, to maintaining those markets and to diversifying away from the people's republic of China and some of the challenges that we have seen with them being our largest trading partner,” said Taylor.
Brown has been a leader for Ohio’s rural communities. Brown fought to secure a number of provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill that are important to Ohio farmers including his Local Food and Regional Market Supply (FARMS) Act which provides permanent funding to help farmers sell their products directly to consumers, create rural jobs, and invest in local and regional food economies through the creation of USDA’s Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP).
Categories: Ohio, General