USDA Providing Help to Livestock Producers Hit by Drought, Wildfire

The USDA says ranchers who have approved applications through the 2021 Livestock Forage Disaster Program for forage losses due to severe drought or wildfire in 2021 will now get additional assistance. 

Those producers will soon begin to receive emergency relief payments from an additional $670 million offsetting increases in supplemental feed costs in 2021 through the Farm Service Agency’s new Emergency Livestock Relief Aid Program. 

“Producers of grazing livestock experienced catastrophic losses of available forage as well as higher costs for supplemental feed in 2021,” says Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack.  

“In order to deliver much-needed assistance as efficiently as possible, phase one of the ELRP will use certain data from the Livestock Forage Disaster Program, allowing USDA to distribute payments within days to livestock producers.” 

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s Executive Director of Government Affairs Allison Rivera says her group appreciates how the Farm Service Agency listened to producers suffering through years of drought and skyrocketing input costs.

(Story Courtesy of the NAFB News Service)