U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell paid a visit to Graves County recently to discuss the distribution of $20 million of USDA funding to build temporary grain storage facilities in areas affected by last year’s tornadoes.

West Kentucky grain producers were especially affected facing uncertainty about storage for their 2022 crops.

This announcement will help reconnect local farmers to grain purchasers and reimburse those who have already constructed temporary facilities using their own resources, according to information from McConnell’s office.

“Last year’s tornado outbreak was one of the worst disasters to ever hit Kentucky and its devastation continues to hamper our families and businesses,” McConnell said. “That includes Western Kentucky’s farmers who, after losing millions of bushels of grain storage capacity in the storm, feared they might be unable to complete this year’s harvest. I knew we couldn’t allow their hard work to go to waste or their farms to fail, so I leveraged my position as Senate Republican Leader to secure USDA funding for new temporary storage facilities and pushed Secretary (Tom) Vilsack to release the federal funds as soon as possible. I look forward to watching this extra capacity come online quickly and remove another obstacle to Western Kentucky’s tornado recovery efforts.”

Vilsack said that over the past two years, weather events in several states caused catastrophic losses to grain storage facilities on family farms as well as a large, commercial grain elevator, leaving stored grain exposed to the elements and affecting commodity marketing options for many producers.

“USDA heard from congressional leaders, including Minority Leader McConnell, who identified a gap in our disaster assistance toolkit, and we went to work designing a new program to deliver direct assistance to producers who are struggling to meet their on-farm storage capacity needs in the wake of disasters,” he said. “Congress has provided USDA with important flexibility through the Commodity Credit Corporation, which gives us the tools to be nimble as we work to support the production and marketing of agricultural commodities and quickly respond to agricultural producers’ needs.”

Kentucky Farm Bureau President Mark Haney, along with other KFB leadership and local Farm Bureau members were on hand to meet with McConnell.

Haney said the damage so many on-farm grain storage bins and elevators incurred in the wake of the terrible tornadoes that ripped through farming communities last December left many of our farm families scrambling to find adequate crop storage for the upcoming harvest.

“Thanks to the continuing dedication Leader McConnell shows to our agriculture industry, and the cost share program announced by the USDA, we see hope for our grain producers and their crops that mean so much to our state’s economy,” he said.