Delgado Statement on SBA Not Accepting EIDL Applications From Small Farmers

Last week, Congress passed emergency legislation to provide funding to replenish Small Business Administration (SBA) programs, support hospitals, and increase our COVID-19 testing capacity. This legislation also explicitly made farms and agricultural operations eligible for SBA's Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Grants (EIDLs) program. Rep. Delgado led a letter with 86 bipartisan members urging the SBA to follow Congressional intent and include small farmers in the EIDL program following the initial passage of the CARES Act.

On Monday, the Small Business Administration announced they will not take new applications for the program until they understand how many loans are in the current application system. Following this news, Rep. Delgado released the following statement:

"After successfully fighting for our farmers to be eligible for the EIDL program, we now learn from the SBA that they will not be taking new loan applications from farmers due to a long list of pending applications from other small businesses. In other words, our farmers are currently eligible for EIDL in theory only, which does nothing to address the practical realities of hardship so many of our local producers are facing day in and day out. We must do better than this and ensure our farmers left out of the first round of funding have a real chance of accessing this critical support in the second round. The work continues to make support for our farmers through EIDL a reality, and not just lip service."

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