Posted November 1, 2013
USDA Under Secretary Michael Scuse was shocked by the damage of an early October blizzard, which killed around 25,000 head of cattle in South Dakota, but a new farm bill may be able to help the affected ranchers, according to a Brownfield Ag News article available here.
Scuse said, “I’ve seen many disasters across the country as I’ve traveled for my job but to see the numbers of cattle that were lying dead in the field, to visit one of the burial pits and see the number of cattle in the pit and to talk with the ranchers out there and to hear their horror stories and just the number of losses – some of the producers have lost 60 to 70% of their herds. It’s going to be very, very difficult for them to recover.”
Scuse said that the SD ranchers need Congress to pass a full five-year farm bill with livestock disaster assistance. The Livestock Indemnity Program expired two years ago. When Congress extended the 2008 farm bill last year, the livestock disaster programs were include, but no funding was allocated. Scuse said, “So the reality is, these programs haven’t existed for the last two years.”
The 2013 farm bill, now being negotiated by the conference committee, could help these ranchers if livestock disaster assistance is restored retroactively.
U.S. Representative Kristi Noem (R-SD) vowed to take the stories of extreme livestock losses to the farm bill conference committee, according to a KELOLand article available here. Noem said that both the House and Senate versions of the farm bill limit the compensation per operator to $100,000, but there have been discussions about dropping that amount to $50,000. Noem said, “We’ll definitely push back on that if there’s an effort to reduce it.”
For more information on disaster assistance and farm bills please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website hereand here.
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