Boswell Announces Immediate USDA Assistance for Iowa’s Pork Producers

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Leonard Boswell announced that US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has pledged to purchase $30 million in pork products from the nation’s hog farmers.

“Iowa’s hog farmers and their families have struggled as the price of pork has fallen steadily the past two years,” said Boswell, a member of the House Committee on Agriculture and Chairman of the General Farm Commodities and Risk Management Subcommittee. “I applaud the USDA’s planned pork purchases as one more step to getting Iowa’s pork producers back on their feet.”

The USDA will make the pork purchases in FY 2009 for federal food and nutrition initiatives, such as school breakfast and lunch programs.

 “The USDA’s pork purchases not only benefit our country’s farmers, but also our nation’s children and others, who will in turn be served nutritious, U.S.-grown food,” said Boswell, who also serves on the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Subcommittee.

 Iowa is the largest pork producing state with 8,578 hog farms that have suffered as the U.S. pork industry has lost nearly $4.5 billion since September 2007. Farmers have been losing an average of more than $21 on each hog taken to market.