The USDA is on-track to deliver the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program payments to farmers. Richard Fordyce, USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation, said things are looking good to get that help in the hands of producers this month.
“We’ve gotten most of the procedural things done in order to get the payments out by the end of February, and that timeline looks good. I mean, we’re very confident we’re going to be able to do that. One way that we’re going to deploy this program is going to be through login.gov, and login.gov is basically a Federal Government portal. It’s not unique to USDA. For example, Veterans Affairs, I think, uses it. Internal Revenue Service, I think, uses it to a degree, and other federal agencies, but it’s simply a portal that folks need to set up an account in.”
Fordyce is encouraging producers to create an account at login.gov as soon as possible.
#When your FBA form is available for you to view and to sign, you can do it through the login.gov platform. And so, you know, I’m just urging farmers to take about 10 or 15 minutes when they’ve got a little bit of downtime, just go to login.gov and set up an account. I have actually not done it myself yet, but I’ve been told by folks that have done it, it didn’t take very long. It was pretty straightforward. And certainly, if you have trouble setting up a login.gov (account), feel free to call the local Farm Service Agency office. I think those folks will be able to help you kind of go through that sign up process or the setting-up that account process, and so login.gov, we’re going to try it on FBA, and we’re hopeful that it works pretty well for the folks that want to use it. We’re going to continue to use that platform as we deploy other programs going forward.”
Again, that’s USDA Undersecretary Richard Fordyce. For more information on how to sign up for a login.gov account, go to farmers.gov/account.