Posted November 1, 2013
USDA Under Secretary Michael Scuse was shocked by the damage of an early October blizzard, which killed around 25,000 head of cattle in South
Dakota, but a new farm bill may be able to help the affected ranchers,
according to a Brownfield Ag News article available here.
Scuse said, “I’ve seen many disasters across the
country as I’ve traveled for my job but to see the numbers of cattle that were
lying dead in the field, to visit one of the burial pits and see the number of
cattle in the pit and to talk with the ranchers out there and to hear their
horror stories and just the number of losses – some of the producers have lost
60 to 70% of their herds. It’s going to be
very, very difficult for them to recover.”
Scuse said that the SD ranchers need Congress to pass a
full five-year farm bill with livestock disaster assistance. The Livestock Indemnity Program expired two
years ago. When Congress extended the
2008 farm bill last year, the livestock disaster programs were include, but no
funding was allocated. Scuse said, “So
the reality is, these programs haven’t existed for the last two years.”
The 2013 farm bill, now being negotiated by the conference
committee, could help these ranchers if livestock disaster assistance is
restored retroactively.
U.S. Representative Kristi Noem (R-SD) vowed to take
the stories of extreme livestock losses to the farm bill conference committee,
according to a KELOLand article available here. Noem said that both the House and Senate
versions of the farm bill limit the compensation per operator to $100,000, but there
have been discussions about dropping that amount to $50,000. Noem said, “We’ll definitely push back on
that if there’s an effort to reduce it.”
For more information on disaster assistance and farm
bills please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here
and here.
