Washington, DC — Farmers in a number of northwest Iowa counties can apply for federal disaster aid if they were affected by the drought.
In a letter to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told the governor that he is designating six Iowa counties as primary natural disaster areas due to the recent [and ongoing] drought. He says that according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, these counties suffered from severe drought for 8 or more consecutive weeks or they suffered from the drought categories that the Drought Monitor calls “extreme” or “exceptional.”
He says additional areas of the state and adjacent states are named as contiguous disaster counties.
Iowa US Senator Joni Ernst says the primary disaster area counties are Clay, Dickinson, Humboldt, Lyon, Osceola, and Palo Alto counties. Because of the “contiguous” designation, farmers in all four of our coverage area counties, including Sioux and O’Brien counties are eligible.
Perdue’s office says a Secretarial disaster designation makes farm operators in primary counties and those counties contiguous to such primary counties eligible to be considered for certain assistance from the Farm Service Agency (FSA), provided eligibility requirements are met. This assistance includes FSA emergency loans. Farmers in eligible counties have 8 months from the date of a Secretarial disaster declaration to apply for emergency loans.
They say the FSA considers each emergency loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of production losses on the farm and the security and repayment ability of the operator. Local FSA offices can provide affected farmers with further information.
