Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act of 2021
Latest action · Feb 8, 2021 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Progress
Where this bill reached, and when. A stage with no date was not reached; one that failed a vote and later carried shows the date it carried.
- IntroducedFeb 8, 2021
- Passed SenateNot reached
- Passed HouseNot reached
- To the PresidentNot reached
- Became lawNot reached
Summary
Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act of 2021
This bill provides funds for the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide assistance to address historical discrimination and disparities in the agriculture sector.
For example, USDA must provide debt forgiveness to help socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers pay off outstanding farm loan debts and address issues relating to COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019).
Additionally, USDA must provide a competitive grant to a school of law or legal research entity to establish the National Center for Minority Farmer Agricultural Law Research and Information. It must also provide grants and loans to resolve property issues relating to ownership and succession on farmland.
The bill provides financial assistance to cooperative development centers, individual cooperatives, or groups of cooperatives that serve socially disadvantaged groups. It also provides financial assistance and technical assistance to certain nonprofit organizations that provide services to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.
USDA must provide support for research, education, and extension at historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions. It must also provide grants to land-grant colleges and universities for student scholarships, including for students who are members of Indian tribes and pursuing an agricultural field of study.
The bill also requires USDA to establish an equity commission to address and mitigate discrimination across its agency.
Cosponsors 9
Members who signed on, in the order they did. Signatures ran from Feb 8, 2021 to Mar 16, 2021, with 5 there on the day it was introduced.
| Seat | Cosponsor | Signed on | |
|---|---|---|---|
| D-MN | Amy Klobuchar | Original | Feb 8, 2021 |
| D-NM | Ben Ray Luján | Original | Feb 8, 2021 |
| D-NJ | Cory A. Booker | Original | Feb 8, 2021 |
| D-MI | Debbie Stabenow | Original | Feb 8, 2021 |
| D-VT | Patrick J. Leahy | Original | Feb 8, 2021 |
| D-NY | Kirsten E. Gillibrand | Feb 12, 2021 | |
| D-OH | Sherrod Brown | Feb 12, 2021 | |
| D-MN | Tina Smith | Mar 9, 2021 | |
| D-CT | Richard Blumenthal | Mar 16, 2021 |
Actions 2
Everything that happened, newest first.
- Feb 8, 2021Introduced in Senate
- Feb 8, 2021Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Subjects
Assigned by the Library of Congress. Policy area: Agriculture and Food.
- Advisory bodies
- Agricultural education
- Agricultural prices, subsidies, credit
- Agriculture and Food
- Alaska Natives and Hawaiians
- Appropriations
- Banking and financial institutions regulation
- Cardiovascular and respiratory health
- Department of Agriculture
- Education programs funding
- Emergency medical services and trauma care
- Executive agency funding and structure
- Farmland
- Government information and archives
- Government lending and loan guarantees
- Government studies and investigations
- Higher education
- Infectious and parasitic diseases
- Labor-management relations
- Land transfers
- Lawyers and legal services
- Libraries and archives
- Migrant, seasonal, agricultural labor
- Minority and disadvantaged businesses
- Minority education
- Minority employment
- Property rights
- Racial and ethnic relations
- Student aid and college costs
- U.S. history
Text 1
Each version as it was printed, newest first.
- Feb 8, 2021Introduced in Senate
Everything here is as published by Congress: the summary is the Congressional Research Service's, the action wording is the clerks', and the subjects are the Library of Congress's. How far it got is read from the actions themselves, taking the most recent one of each kind, so a bill that failed a vote and later passed is shown as having passed. Records come from this bill on Congress.gov and govinfo.gov.