Earlier this week, Senator Joni Ernst joined with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and the rest of the Iowa Delegation in Washington in penning a letter to U.S. Ag Secretary and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack about the need for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to modernize their disaster programs and to make it easier on farmers not only in Iowa but across the country, to be made whole again after a weather event.
This effort comes on the heels of the state being subjected to three major weather events in as many months. In rural communities, the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the USDA usually work together to make the communities whole again. However, the SBA has modernized its assistance programs more recently than the USDA has. Also, farmers do not qualify for SBA assistance and need to see more modernization from the Ag Department.
Senator Joni Ernst is the Ranking Member of the Senate Small Business Committee and a long-time member of the Senate Ag Committee. She talks about the situation as she sees it. The Senator says this is not a difficult undertaking and not a partisan issue.
She explains a few differences between SBA and USDA from a high-altitude viewpoint.
The speed must also be matched with efficiency and especially accuracy. Weather damage is not the same field to field as it is when a building is damaged in town. You must assess each field differently. Ernst says that modernizing some of the tools that USDA uses could go a long way to getting that done.
