2008 Farm Bill Offers Ag Disaster Assistance

The 2008 Farm Bill, officially titled The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, was completed by Congress and signed by the president in June.

As is often the case with farm bills, this one contains many of the same provisions as the previous bill.

“However, a significant new provision of the 2008 farm bill is the agricultural disaster relief trust fund and supplemental agricultural disaster assistance program,” says Dwight Aakre, North Dakota State University Extension farm management specialist. “The trust fund is used to make payments under five new disaster assistance programs. These programs make up what has commonly been referred to as the permanent disaster program. The intent of the permanent disaster program was to put in place a support mechanism that, in the event of a disaster, passage of ad hoc disaster legislation would not be necessary.”

The new disaster programs are the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE), Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP), Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP), Tree Assistance Program (TAP) and Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees and Farm-raised Fish (EALHF).

The SURE program covers quantity and/or quality crop losses, TAP covers tree losses and EALHF covers adverse weather events affecting livestock producers. To be eligible for benefits from any of these three programs, a producer must carry crop insurance on all insurable crops and Noninsured Crop Assistance Program (NAP) coverage on all noninsurable crops on all acreage in all counties. This includes pasture and hay land.

Since the enrollment deadline for both crop insurance and NAP for 2008 crops has passed, a waiver has been authorized in the 2008 farm bill to allow producers to pay a buy-in fee for 2008 eligibility for SURE. The deadline to sign up and pay the buy-in fee is Sept. 16. Buy-in does not provide crop insurance or NAP coverage, but it does make the producer eligible for any payment under the SURE program for 2008. The drought conditions in western North Dakota may result in some producers being eligible for SURE payments, but only if they are fully covered by crop insurance and NAP.

Farmers wishing to participate in the 2008 direct and counter-cyclical payment program must sign up by Sept. 30. It could be easy to overlook program enrollment this year because many producers already have reported their crop acres to the Farm Service Agency. Most years, sign-up would have been completed in the spring, followed by reporting acres in June.

“Farm program legislation tends to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary,” Aakre says. “It has been difficult to pass farm program legislation that charts a different course from the previous program. Of recent farm bills, the one attempt at revolutionizing farm programs came in the 1995 Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act, which became widely unpopular within two years of its enactment.”

NDSU Agriculture Communication