Market News & Headlines >> $100 Million-plus Disaster Assistance

Under the 2014 Farm Bill, which makes livestock disaster programs permanent, the Obama Administration will come to the aid livestock producers for losses experienced in 2012 and 2013 as well as this year. Sign up is planned to begin in April. California’s drought may result in up to $100 million for 2014 losses and up to $50 million for previous years.

It also is earmarking $15 million in targeted conservation assistance in areas of extreme and exceptional drought, including $5 million for California and $10 million for Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The goal is to conserve scarce water resources, reduce wind erosion and improve livestock access to water.

Additional programs are targeting California and range from emergency water assistant grants for communities running out of water to summer meal programs.

Producers need to gather documentation of the number and kind of livestock that died, supplemented by possible by photographs or video records of ownership and losses, birth date recordings or purchase receipts to prove ownership, dates of death, costs of transport to new pastures or safer grounds, feed purchases prompted by the drought, crop records, evidence of damaged farm land, etc.

For more information, see: www.usda.gov/drought