On May 21, California Congressmembers David Valadao (R-Hanford), Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield), and Jim Costa (D-Fresno), along with Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), reintroduced the Farm to Market Road Improvement Act. The bipartisan legislation aims to direct additional federal funding toward repairing and maintaining rural roads and bridges that are heavily used by agricultural freight trucks.
Specifically, the Act would create a 10 percent set-aside in the Rural Surface Grant Transportation Program for farm-to-market roads. Farm-to-market roads would mean roads within a “covered county”, which is a county that has an annual gross agricultural production value of at least $1 billion and agricultural production of at least $500,000 per square mile. Qualifying counites would include the RCRC member counites of Kings and Tulare. This legislation would also require the Department of Transportation and the US Department of Agriculture to create, and annually update, a list of covered counties.
For additional information, contact RCRC Policy Advocate Eric Will.