Vermont’s agriculture secretary and its lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives met with farmers Thursday, telling them in a virtual gathering that they are working to help them through the coronavirus crisis.
“This literally is the first pandemic that our county has experienced in a hundred years,” observed Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat, in addressing farmers who attended the online meeting.
Welch and Secretary Anson Tebbetts of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture said a series of requests have been filed with the federal government — both by the state’s congressional delegation and by a coalition of agriculture leaders representing each of the New England states.
The officials sent letters to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue. The letters asked for support, such as guaranteed minimum prices for dairy commodities, direct government payments to farm families and for the USDA to stock the nation’s emergency food shelves with more milk products.
Over the past decade, the nation has lost 17,000 dairy farms, Vermont’s congressional delegation said in a letter to Perdue.
Source: nbcnewyork.com
