Poultry farmers on Delmarva say they feel like they’ve been left out of relief funding given during the pandemic. “Through the CARES Act that has been implemented through Congress, the USDA has allocated funds for other aspects of agriculture who have been impacted greatly by COVID. However, our chicken community was not included in many of those programs,” said Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. executive director Holly Porter.
Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. is calling on Congress to help fix that. DPI sent a letter saying that earlier assistance didn’t specifically mention poultry farming when giving federal aid to the agricultural industry. “For many in our chicken community they would not necessarily quality, both from the chicken processing companies who are obviously larger than a typical small business, as well as our chicken growers who – although they are small businesses – many of them don’t have a lot of employees,” said Porter.
Porter tells 47ABC that many in the poultry industry don’t quality for PPP loans, including chicken farms with only a couple of employees. “Many of our chicken farmers are small farm families so they may have one or two employees or it may just be themselves or a family member that’s helping out on the farm. So again, the PPP is really meant for small businesses to keep the employees working,” said Porter.
Porter says she hopes congress will include details specific to the poultry industry in any upcoming legislation. “Really what we’re asking for is for congress to help in what we think will sort of be the next or the last stimulus based on COVID to make sure that we have some type of assistance to our chicken farmers who are on Delmarva,” said Porter.
Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. says that Delaware senators have been doing outreach to see how federal funding could best serve farmers locally. She says that if all goes to plan, some language specific to the poultry industry could come in the next few weeks. “There’s been a lot of discussions both within DPI with our local congressional delegation and as well the national level,” said Porter.
