Have flood or storm damage? The Illinois Farm Service (FSA) Agency may be able to help.
Rick Graden, Illinois FSA’s acting state executive director, encouraged farmers to share any damage reports with their county FSA offices.
“The information’s coming a little bit slow to us here about what’s going on with the flooding,” Graden said. “We try to track those so we can see if there’s any programs that we can offer to assist producers. FSA offices have quite a few programs that might help in this situation, and we just want to make sure we offer those out.”
FSA offers low-interest loans that can help pay for storm damage to farm buildings or other facilities. Graden also pointed to four programs that also could help farmers:
- Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP), which provides benefits for livestock deaths caused by adverse weather, such as flooding. LIP helps cover 75 percent of the average fair market value of the livestock.
- Emergency Livestock Assistance Program (ELAP). The ELAP assistance, Graden said, could potentially cover losses such as bales of hay stored along a creek or river that became unusable or drifted away because of flooding.
- Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) provides funding for farmers to rehabilitate farmland and conservation practices damaged by floods or other natural disasters.
- Tree Assistance Program (TAP). The 2014 farm bill authorized the program, which helps orchardists and nursery tree growers replant or rehab trees, bushes and vines damaged by natural disaster.
Related: Keys to documenting and reporting a yield loss from flooding to get an adjustment on cropland assessment. Click here.
Content for this story provided by FarmWeekNow.com.