FEMA reached out to our national organizations, The Ag Retailers Association (ARA) and The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) last Friday to make us aware of an opportunity to secure facecoverings for essential industries.  FEMA has contracted with the Hanes Company to make the face coverings and ship them directly to ag retail and distribution locations, at no charge to the facilities.  These face coverings do not meet PPE standards, but they are meant to help provide some level of protection for essential employees as described in this CDC Guidance for Essential Industries.  

 

This week, IFCA submitted a spreadsheet of all IFCA ag retail and distributor members in Illinois that contained an estimate of the number of employees at your company. Thanks to all the IFCA members who responded to our Saturday email requesting your # of employees--the turnaround on this was very short!   If we did not hear from you we estimated the number of employees at your locations, and the facecoverings will be shipped to your main offices for you to distribute to your facilities.  We do not know when the facecoverings will arrive, but hopefully it will be in the coming weeks.  We will keep you posted.