Agricultural Business Management News

by Megan Roberts, Extension educator Minnesota Small Business Relief Grant applications are open from June 23 to July 2, 2020. MN Department of Employment and Economic Development ( DEED ) runs the $63.5 million program. Farmers (that operate for-profit) do qualify to apply for the $10,000 grants for small businesses that faced hardship due to COVID-19. On June 23, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's Commissioners Office confirmed that farmers that operate their farm as a for-profit business and meet the other eligibility thresholds qualify; hobby and retirement farms do not qualify. A randomized, computer-generated lottery process will be used to select eligible businesses that will receive the $10,000 grant awards. Fifty percent of the funding will go to rural small businesses. Further allocations of the funding "include: $18 million for businesses with six or fewer full-time employees $10 million for minority business enterprises $2.5 million for veteran-owned

By Rob Holcomb and Megan Robert, Extension Educators, Agricultural Business Management After the passage of the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, H.R. 7010 , the Small Business Administration (SBA) created a simplified form to use when applying for PPP loan forgiveness.   This new simplified form is SBA Form 3508EZ .   SBA also published a new set of instructions for the Form 3508EZ. PPP borrowers may use SBA Form 3508EZ if they meet the following criteria. are a single owner with no employees,  OR did not reduce any single employee’s wages by more than 25%  and  did not reduce overall number of employees or hours during the covered period (with the exception of safe harbor FTE reductions),  OR did not reduce any single employee’s wages by more than 25%  and  you were unable to operate at normal business levels during the covered period due to COVID-19.  This blog post builds upon an earlier June 17 blog post from Megan Roberts tit