Shaila Dewan has a story for the New York Times that paints a sad portrait of the realities confronting farmers with crops in the Mississippi Delta following an overly wet fall.As Dewan reports, as recently as August, Southern farmers thought this year might be a bumper year for them. Then the rains came. From September through October the South was bombarded with rain storm after rain storm. They came at a time when the South is usually dry and farmers need to be harvesting their crops.
Instead a different scenario has played out this year: “The soybeans shriveled and blackened with mold. The rice keeled over into the mud. The cotton hardened into tight little spitballs. The sweet potatoes rotted underground. When the combines could get into the fields, they scarred them with deep ruts that will make next year’s planting more expensive.”
The situation is so bad in the South, that some farmers don’t know what next year will be like, or whether there will even be a next year. As Dewan reports, the situation is especially concerning for smaller farmers in the South.
The rain affected states include Alabama, eastern Arkansas, Georgia, “parts of Louisiana,” and Mississippi. Mississippi and Georgia have already requested the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) declare the states disaster areas that would make farmers in the declared areas eligible for federal assistance. However, Dewan writes that, “help from Washington, in the form of low-interest loans, often takes a year or more to reach the farmers who need it.”
To that end Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln (AR) and Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Thad Cochran (MS) are working on bipartisan legislation to provide disaster assistance to the affected areas. The legislation “would provide timely disaster assistance to farmers affected by this fall’s heavy rains, floods and other weather-related disasters [,]” states Senator Lincoln’s press release on the legislation. Rep. Marion Berry (AR) will introduce companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
According to the press release from Senator Lincoln’s office, the University of Arkansas’s Division of Agriculture released a report that estimates crop losses for the state at over $300 million, but this “does not factor in the more than $80 million of lost wages of agriculture-related jobs. In addition to on-farm losses, the report also shows a decline of nearly $162 million in economic value-added, which encompasses soy, corn and rice processing, cotton ginning and reduced household spending by Arkansans whose incomes are tied to agriculture.”
Senator Lincoln and Cochran’s legislation would spend an estimated$1.3 billion on direct payment assistance for counties declared ‘“primary”’ disaster areas by the USDA. The Congressional Budget Office scores the bill as costing $2.9 million, however, the funds have already been authorized by Congress as they would come from the previously passed Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). “The language also includes $650 million to assist specialty crop producers, $150 million in assistance for livestock producers and $42 million to aid first handlers of cottonseed.”
In Mississippi, 79 of the 82 counties are already declared primary disaster areas, according to a press release from Senator Cochran’s office. “Agriculture economists at Mississippi State University estimate that crop losses in Mississippi are nearing $485 million with losses exceeding 30 percent of the state’s overall crop value. Based on crop reports, the MSU report noted that almost 64 percent of the state’s sweet potato crop will be lost. Nearly half of the state’s cotton, 44 percent of soybeans and 41 percent of grain sorghum will also be lost this year.”
With health care taking up the Senate schedule, it is tough to estimate when this bill might receive some attention. Additionally, the Agriculture Appropriations bill has already been passed and signed into law, so that bill is not a vehicle on which to attach this bipartisan legislation. However, an omnibus appropriations bill is another potential vehicle to attach the legislation to, and it is looking more and more likely that the remaining appropriations bills will come to the floor as an omnibus package.
A spokesperson for Chairman Lincoln's office said the Chairman is looking for all legislative options to move the bill, including legislative vehicles that may come up before the end of this year, or very least at the beginning of next year. The Chairman is also in talks with the administration "on all options to provide disaster relief quickly."
To read the New York Times article click here.
To read the press release from Senator Lincoln’s office click here.
To read the press release from Senator Cochran’s office click here.
Posted: 11/23/09
