When the phrase “hurricane preparedness” comes to mind, those never having done so may think boarded windows and doors or multiple vehicles and evacuation procedures, but what about farmers and ranchers living in hurricane-prone areas? How can they prepare for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season? Offering some advice is Agriculture Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Richard Fordyce.
“Document inventories, and sometimes we do that, I think, and then sometimes we let some time go by. Maybe we haven’t done that, but it’s vehicles, equipment that have been added to the fleet. One of the categories that a lot of us probably don’t have an exact inventory would be livestock, depending on obviously the day and whatnot, but the number of livestock, what they are, what their ages are, any kind of records that are pertinent to the operation around any kind of investments that you’ve made in the crop, in the herd, those kinds of things.”
He clarifies what he means by documentation for F-PAC-supported disaster assistance programs, not necessarily forms.
“That documentation could be handwritten notes, it could be photographs, it could be a number of things that can actually document or demonstrate a loss.”
More advice: Crop damage from a hurricane needs to be reported to local crop insurance agents within 72 hours of damage discovery, and the undersecretary admits, while crop insurance through F-PAC’s Risk Management Agency is what most producers think of regarding farm disaster assistance, the other areas of F-PAC, the Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service, can also assist.
“On the FSA side, we have programs that can help recover from obviously crop losses, infrastructure losses, livestock losses, even to the point of low-interest emergency loans through Farm Service Agency. And then on the NRCS side, we have opportunities to engage through the Emergency Watershed Protection Program. That’s a program that’s used a lot after natural disasters. Certainly, hurricanes would be one of those natural disasters where that would qualify. Also, we have things through the EQIP program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, that can help producers recover from those natural disasters, in this case specifically, hurricanes.”
More information on hurricane preparedness and USDA assistance in hurricane recovery can be found online at www.farmers.gov.