The legislation provides $13 billion in agricultural assistance and programs and specifies that the funding may be used to “make payments to producers of advanced biofuel, biomass-based diesel, cellulosic biofuel, conventional biofuel, or renewable fuel…produced in the United States, for unexpected market losses as a result of COVID–19.”
Coronavirus package allots $13 billion for crop and livestock producers Lawmakers combined the coronavirus bill with legislation to fund the government through the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year. By
12/23/2020 Row crop farmers would see payments of $20 an acre and livestock producers would be compensated for animals culled during the pandemic under the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill that was unexpectedly challenged by President Trump on Tuesday, a day after Congress passed it. The bill provides $13 billion for agriculture, to be distributed through initiatives that include a $400 million dairy donation program, aid to contract poultry growers, and assistance for textile mills and, potentially, ethanol refineries.
by Cody Ronnfeldt (Norfolk Daily News) … (Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO, Geoff) Cooper says following the election, they’ve seen a lot of momentum building toward a potential national low carbon fuel standard.
“We’ve seen the role that ethanol has played in meeting the objectives of state LCFS programs like the one in California. Ethanol has been responsible for about 40 percent of the greenhouse gas reductions achieved under the California LCFS and so we know ethanol can play a significant role in helping reduce emissions under these programs and we believe it would do the same thing under a national program.”
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) The $1.4 trillion spending package includes appropriation for Fiscal Year 2021, the COVID stimulus package, extensions of popular tax credits that otherwise expired on December 31st, and the Energy Act of 2020, a $35B version of a larger energy bill that has been drifting around in Congress since 2016.
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As Fuels America noted, “the new omnibus appropriations and COVID-19 relief package extends key tax provisions for low-carbon biofuels and explicitly authorizes the USDA to deliver on long-awaited aid for biofuel producers.” One Hill observer added, “The bill is a classic end-of-year compromise: everybody got something, and nobody got everything.”
Excerpt from House Agriculture Committee: The Agriculture Committee was given a total of $26 billion to spend on COVID relief for nutrition assistance and agriculture and rural programs. Half of that funding, $13 billion, was provided to the House Agriculture and the House Education & Labor Committees to provide nutrition assistance. The other $13 billion went to agricultural assistance and programs. Of that $13 billion, $300 million was provided to the Commerce Department to operate a program to assist the fisheries industry.
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May make payments to producers of advanced biofuel, biomass-based diesel, cellulosic biofuel, conventional biofuel, or renewable fuels with market losses due to COVID-19; READ MORE