Disaster Areas

Disaster Areas. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Last week the USDA designated 15 counties in Washington as natural disaster areas due to losses caused by frosts, freezes, extreme cold, high winds and excessive snow that occurred Nov. 10, 2010, through March 25, 2011. That will also include 11 contiguous counties in Washington and 6 in Oregon. Executive Director of the Washington Horticultural Association, Bruce Grim

GRIM: One of those anomalous weather events was that November freeze a year ago and we definitely know it had some impact. We can see with our own eyes out in some orchards that there’s some trees that are dead or dying as a result of that very early freeze that caused some tree damage. It’s scattered throughout the state depending on how cold it got in your particular area, there’s more or less of it and a tree kill is what is required, I think, under the federal disaster relief. Damage won’t do it and certainly the same is true for wine grapes.

Because of the disaster declaration all qualified farm operators in the designated areas are eligible for low interest emergency loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency, provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity.

Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.