There’s nothing the U.S. government can do about the millions of bushels of damaged crops here under current laws or disaster-aid programs, U.S. Agriculture Under Secretary Bill Northey told a Reuters reporter.
The USDA has no mechanism to compensate farmers for damaged crops in storage, Northey said, a problem never before seen on this scale.
That’s in part because U.S. farmers have never stored so much of their harvests, after years of oversupplied markets, low prices and the latest blow of lost sales from the U.S. trade war with China - previously their biggest buyer of soybean exports.
Congress would have to pass legislation to address the harvests lost in the storm, according to Northey and a USDA statement to Reuters.
