Coming up in August, deadlines for various USDA Farm Service Agency program and service applications. Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Richard Fordyce says it starts on Aug. 3, the final day for candidate nominations for this year’s FSA County Committee elections.
“They can nominate themselves, or they can nominate someone else to be a candidate to run. There’s a lot of things that happen locally that the County Committee can weigh in on, checking and making sure eligibility is correct. There are opportunities for them to weigh in on payment rates and other things.”
With the actual elections taking place in early November. On Friday, Aug. 7, the deadline for eligible producers to apply for the Assistance for Specialty Crop Farmers program.
“They either use a login.gov account, or they go to the local FSA County office. What they’ll find is really an application that’s pre-populated. If they’ve done an acreage report, we will have an application for them.”
More than $16 million in disaster relief payments will be available for producers applying for the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program.
“The new component of SDRP that we’re talking about is the quality loss component. The sign-up deadline for SDRP stage one, stage two, quality loss, everything involved under SDRP ends on Aug. 12.”
At month’s end, landowners can update their acreage base allocations. Allocations connected to the primary FSA-operated farm safety net programs, agricultural risk coverage and price loss coverage.
“Landowners really don’t need to do anything. If once they got that notification that those additional acres looked correct, want to accept them, the only thing that folks would want to do is if they looked at that notification, maybe they have questions about that, then they need to go into the local FSA office before Aug. 31.”
Eligibility requirements, payment rates and additional details are available through local Farm Service Agency offices or online at www.fsa.usda.gov.