National Black Farmers Association President John Boyd Jr. called out the administration of President Joe Biden during a televised interview Monday for not helping U.S. farmers and stopping China from buying American farmland.
"This administration hasn't put farmers first," Breitbart reported Boyd saying during the interview. "Now, they're out proposing another $37 billion in aid to Ukraine, and we haven't taken care of America's farmers here at home, and the administration, like I said, isn't doing enough to make sure that farmers get the aid that they need and support that they need from this administration.
"We have 16,000 members that are still waiting for debt relief and we're still finding aid for other countries. Inflation is on the rise with no end in sight right now. And the president, the agriculture secretary [aren't] doing enough to assist America's farmers right now. We have China who's buying America's farms, and we haven't done anything about it, and this administration has been totally silent on these issues."
He said farmers are facing record foreclosures as well as record high "input costs" making it hard to maintain the industry.
"The administration isn't doing anything about it," he said. "Totally silent."
In May, Biden visited a family farm and announced several actions he was taking to help American farmers.
According to the White House, his plan included increasing the number of counties eligible for farmers to plant second crops on their land in the same year to allow for an increase in food production without having to cultivate new land, cutting farming costs by increasing technical assistance and "other nutrient management tools" to make "precision agriculture" more efficient, and doubling funding for domestic fertilizer production from $250 million to $500 million to counter supply chain disruptions from Russian fertilizer production.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in September the administration was working to build more "resilient" markets, protect farmers, and reduce costs.
"Highly concentrated local markets in livestock and poultry have increasingly left farmers, ranchers, growers and producers vulnerable to a range of practices that unjustly exclude them from economic opportunities and undermine a transparent, competitive, and open market—which harms producers' ability to deliver the quality, affordable food working families depend upon," Vilsack, who is a member of the White House Competition Council, said Sept. 26. "USDA is focused on building new, fairer, and more resilient markets, protecting producers, and reducing food costs, and we are proving again today that we will use all tools at our disposal to do so."
Boyd said despite Biden and his administration claiming to help the industry, they are not even responding to meeting requests.
"There's been no meeting from this administration," Boyd said in the interview. "I've reached out to high-level officials, Democratic leadership. They're not keeping their word."
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