Gazette Staff Report
USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers disaster assistance and low-interest loads programs to assist agriculture producers in their recovery efforts following floods or similar qualifying natural disasters.
Available programs and loans include:
• Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program: Provides financial assistant to producers of non insurable crops when low yields, loss of inventory or prevented planting occur due to natural disasters (includes native grass for grazing). Eligible producers must have purchased NAP coverage for 2016 crops.
• Livestock Indemnity Program: Offers payments to eligible producers for livestock death losses in excess of normal mortality due to adverse weather. Eligible losses may include those determined by FSA to have been caused by hurricanes, floods, blizzards, wildfires, tropical storms, tornados, lightning, extreme heat and extreme cold. Producers will be required to provide verifiable documentation of death losses resulting from an eligible adverse weather event and must submit a notice of loss to their local FSA office within 30 calendar days of when the loss of livestock is apparent.
• Tree Assistance Program: Provides assistance to eligible orchardists and nursery tree growers for qualifying tree, shrub and vine losses due to natural disaster.
• Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-raised Fish: Provides emergency relief for losses due to feed or water shortage, disease, adverse weather or other conditions, which are not adequately addressed by other disaster programs. ELAP covers physically damaged or destroyed livestock feed that was purchased or mechanically harvested forage or feedstuffs intended for use as feed for the producer’s eligible livestock. In order to be considered eligible, harvested forage must be baled; forage that is only cut, racked or windrowed is not eligible. Producers must submit a notice of loss to their local FSA office within 30 calender days of when the loss is apparent. ELAP covers up to 150 lost grazing days in instances when a producer has been forced to remove livestock from grazing pasture due to floodwaters and for beekeepers, ELAP covers beehive losses (the physical structure) in instances where the hive has been destroyed by a natural disaster including flooding, high winds and tornadoes.
• Emergency Loan Program: Available to producers with agriculture operations located in a county under a primary or contiguous Secretarial distaster designation. These low interest loans help producers recover production and physical losses due to drought, flooding.
• Emergency Conservation Program: Provides emergency funding for farmers and ranchers to rehabilitate land severely damaged by natural disasters; includes fence loss.
• HayNet: In an internet-based Hay and Grazing Net Ad Service allowing farmers and ranchers to share “Need Hay” ads and “Have Hay” ads online. Farmers can also use another feature to post advertisements for grazing land, specifically ads announcing the availability of grazing land or ads requesting a need for land to graze. www.fsa.usda.gov/haynet
For more information visit FSA online at www.usda.gov/disaster.