Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE 7/8/20

USDA fell way short of its target to provide food banks with $1.2 billion worth of dairy, meat and produce boxes by the end of June, an initiative that has faced scrutiny for the department’s selection of contractors, including some companies with little experience in food distribution.

Crunching the numbers: As of July 1, USDA had verified a total of 27.5 million food boxes delivered in the first round of the $3 billion program, which aims to buy up surplus farm products and send them to food banks and other feeding programs where demand is surging. That’s equivalent to $755.5 million, or 63 percent of USDA’s target, based on the average cost of food boxes, Reuters reports. By Tuesday, some 32 million boxes had been delivered and verified.

Meanwhile, USDA’s much larger direct payment program has now doled out nearly $5.4 billion, out of the total $16 billion up for grabs for farmers and ranchers burned by supply chain disruptions. A quarter of the money has gone to farmers in Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin, and Iowa alone got more than 10 percent of the funds, as the Food and Environment Reporting Network points out.

Some industries are still looking to get a slice of the stimulus funds. More than 25 California lawmakers this week sent a letter to USDA asking Secretary Sonny Perdue to include wine grapes on the list of specialty crops that are eligible for aid.

Economic shutdowns have led to an “overall decline in retail sales to consumers, reduced volumes of wine shipped to market and lower prices for bulk wine in inventories,” the bipartisan delegation wrote.

The view from the farm: The federal aid programs helped boost optimism among ag producers in June, which improved by more than 13 percent from the previous month, according to a survey from Purdue University and CME Group. But industry sentiment is still far below its record highs from earlier in the year before the coronavirus pandemic hit, according to the monthly index.