Even with a variety of problems and struggles for USDA employees caused by the pandemic, USDA Under Secretary Bill Northey said they delivered ad hoc programs very quickly. Many of those programs have turned out to be vital for farmers, such as CFAP and CFAP2.

And the head of the Farm Service Agency, Richard Fordyce, said when the first round of CFAP began operating, he would get emails, calls, and texts from farmers congratulating the Ag Department for getting emergency assistance programs out to producers quickly. 

"We put a lotta dollars out in the countryside at a very critical time those were meaningful dollars and I can't count the number of interactions I've had with folks that said, "That got me over the hump. That got me to next year." That's pretty powerful stuff," Fordyce noted.

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