Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 4/8/20

The Agriculture Department has yet to decide how to divvy up more than $23 billion in agricultural aid provided by Congress in the $2 trillion stimulus package. In the meantime, commodity groups and their allies on Capitol Hill are swamping the Trump administration with policy ideas and requests for financial help.

The National Milk Producers Federation and International Dairy Foods Association sent a joint plan to USDA to bolster the dairy industry and redistribute milk products to food banks, school feeding programs and other outlets. The industry expects to lose as much as $10 billion in sales over the next six months, Food Business News reports.

Aid for ethanol: A bipartisan group of senators is calling on USDA to direct farm relief funds toward biofuel producers, who have seen demand and prices plummet with the drop in gasoline consumption. In a letter to Secretary Sonny Perdue, 15 senators led by Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said 4 billion gallons of ethanol production have been idled since March, reports Pro Energy's Eric Wolff.

Beyond USDA: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) is pressing the Small Business Administration to clarify farmers' eligibility for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, and to allow ag producers seeking aid through the Paycheck Protection Program to use alternative calculations rather than payroll costs to determine the size of their loans.

"Many sole-proprietors do not pay themselves an income," Baldwin wrote in a letter to Administrator Jovita Carranza on Tuesday.

"Additionally, because of the unique circumstances of agricultural production, basing the PPP loan size on a farm's payroll costs will likely yield loans that are far smaller than needed."