Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
STATE GETS
Lion’s share of drought aid.
Arkansas landowners are eligible for nearly one-fourth of the $16 million in emergency drought aid being made available to 19 states by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The state is designated to receive $3.79 million to be distributed through two programs administered by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The state was notified last week that it would get a share of any money made available, but the exact amount wasn’t released until Wednesday by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
While Arkansas’ share is the most slated for any state, it’s short of the $8.5 million sought in late July by state Agriculture Secretary Butch Calhoun in a letter to Dave White, chief conservationist for the conservation service.
Calhoun had asked for $7 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and $1.5 million in Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program funding.
Instead, the state will get about $1.79 million for the incentive program, which helps growers implement farming techniques that minimize erosion and runoff, and $2 million for the wildlife program for wildlife-habitat improvement.
The money will assist farmers with practices such as planting annual forage plants, permanently replanting pastures and improving or digging ponds used to water livestock.
“With this funding, we hope to provide some immediate relief and a catalyst for a quicker recovery,” Mike Sullivan, state conservationist for the conservation service in Arkansas, said in a statement.
Under the programs, farmers with acreage in counties designated as being in “exceptional” or “extreme” drought are eligible for help, with those in “exceptional” counties getting first priority.
Last week, the U. S. Drought Monitor reported that while nearly the entire state is in a drought, 81 per-
cent was rated as extreme or worse, with 44 percent of the state considered to be in “exceptional drought,” the monitor’s worst category. That exceptional designation covers land in 45 of the state’s 75 counties.
Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky and Nebraska are the six states that have counties listed as being in exceptional drought.
Since the drought’s start, Arkansas’ livestock farmers have seen pastures dry up and feed prices climb, causing them to cull their herds early. At the same time, row-crop farmers have been forced to spend millions of dollars to irrigate as rainfall in June and July was nearly nonexistent and record-high temperatures were set.
Debbie Moreland, program administrator for the Arkansas Association of Conserva- tion Districts, attributed the state’s large share of the funding made available Wednesday to a push that began early last month that included a July 17 meeting with White and the enlistment of help from the state’s congressional delegation.
Moreland said Arkansas’ drought situation, combined with the USDA conservation service’s existing contacts with l andowners, put t he state in a position to quickly get projects planned and ap- proved.
“One, we could definitely show that we did have extraordinary drought,” Moreland said. “Another thing is that whenever you do something like this, you have an extraordinarily short sign-up period — less than 10 days.”
Because the funding must be committed by t he end of the current federal f i scal year, Sept. 30, growers have until Tuesday to apply for assistance through these programs. More information is available on drought assistance at www.ar.nrcs.usda. gov or by calling county conservation district offices or a USDA service center.
More drought aid is on the horizon, Vilsack said.
The Arkansas office of the USDA Farm Service Agency i s awaiti ng word on how much the state could receive f rom about $ 14 million i n unobligated agency money that is being redirected into its Emergency Conservation Program.
Kent Politsch, a spokesman for the agency in Washington, said the exact amount available is still being determined. Once that’s done, the agency will assess state needs and requests and disperse the money “as fairly as it can.”
“With the drought as widespread as it is this year, Arkansas is one of the states t hat’s suffered t he most,” Politsch said. “So I would expect it would receive a fairly significant amount of what it’s requesting or needing.”