For Immediate Release
January 12, 1999

DES MOINES, IOWA --- The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) today expressed appreciation to USDA and the Clinton Administration for a swift announcement to its request for direct help for U.S. pork producers.

Ag Secretary Dan Glickman outlined specifics for approximately $50 million in direct cash payments to small pork producers. Producers qualify if they marketed fewer than 1,000 hogs during the last six months of 1998 and are still in operation. Payments are not eligible on hogs marketed under fixed-price or cost-plus contracts. Nor are payments eligible to any operation with a gross income greater than $2.5 million in 1998, as is true for USDA's crop disaster assistance programs.

Producers may sign up for the program at their Farm Service Agency local offices from Feb. 1 to Feb. 12. It will pay eligible producers up to $5 per slaughter-weight hog or the equivalent for feeder pigs multiplied by the number of hogs marketed during the last six months of 1998. The maximum payment per eligible operation is $2,500. Payments will be made two to three weeks following the sign-up period.

"We appreciate these funds and the swift response to helping family pork producers through this economic crisis," says NPPC President Donna Reifschneider, a producer from Smithton, Ill. "This is the first step in addressing the liquidity crisis facing pork producers."

NPPC's Board of Directors met with USDA on Jan. 8 in Washington, D.C., and were informed of the limited resources available for such a program, according to Reifschneider.

"NPPC will continue to work with the administration and Congress on ways of providing additional cash infusion to pork producers," she says.

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