The USDA has named 82 counties in Kansas as federal disaster areas because of drought.
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, Secretary of Argiculture Dale Rodman and Kansas Water Office Director Tracy Streeter welcomed the announcement.
“Natural disasters cannot be predicted so farmers and ranchers need to have access to flexible, efficient and workable disaster programs to help them recover from losses while also enabling them to continue caring for their livestock,” Secretary Rodman said. “These changes will help USDA act quickly to provide necessary assistance to agricultural producers.”
Streeter said while these changes are welcome, it is imperative to continue monitoring precipitation levels, soil moisture content, stream flow levels, and crop conditions.
Agricultural producers from the 82 Kansas counties declared as disaster areas will be eligible for emergency FSA loans. The current loan interest rate, which was set in 1993 at 3.75 percent, was reduced by USDA to 2.25 percent. Additionally, USDA lowered the rental payment reduction when landowners use Conservation Reserve Program acres for emergency grazing and haying from 25 percent to 10 percent in 2012.
The disaster declarations are the result of improvements the USDA recently made to current federal disaster assistance programs to update the disaster designation process and deliver more efficient and flexible disaster assistance to farmers and ranchers coping with the ongoing drought.
In place for more than two decades, the USDA streamlined the federal disaster designation process to assure a faster disaster designation. The designation makes farmers and ranchers eligible for Farm Service Agency (FSA) low interest emergency loans. This process update resulted in the designation of 1,016 primary counties nationwide as disaster areas effective Thurs., July 12, 2012.
Primary Counties: Allen, Anderson, Barber, Barton, Bourbon, Butler, Chautquaua, Cheyenne, Clark, Coffey, Comanche, Cowley, Crawford, Decatur, Edwards, Elk, Finney, Ford, Gove, Graham, Grant, Gray, Greeley, Greenwood, Hamilton, Harper, Harvey, Haskell, Hodgeman, Kearney, Kingman, Kiowa, Labette, Lane, Linn, Logan, Lyon, McPherson, Meade, Montgomery, Morton, Neosho, Ness, Norton, Pawnee, Phillips, Pratt, Rawlins, Reno, Rice, Rooks, Scott, Sedgwick, Seward, Sheridan, Sherman, Stafford, Stanton, Stevens, Sumner, Thomas, Trego, Wallace, Wichita, Wilson and Woodson
Contiguous Counties: Chase, Cherokee, Dickinson, Ellis, Ellsworth, Franklin, Marion, Morris, Miami, Osage, Osborne, Rush, Russell, Saline, Smith and Wabaunsee