HANCOCK COUNTY — The federal government designated Hancock County and 73 other Indiana counties as primary natural disaster areas where relief is available for farmers impacted by this year’s water-logged planting season.
The designation allows farmers to be eligible for assistance from the Farm Service Agency as long as certain requirements are met, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture said in a news release.
The assistance includes access to low-interest emergency loans, which can be used to restore or replace essential property; pay all or part of production costs associated with the disaster year; pay essential family living expenses; reorganize the farming operation; and refinance certain debts.
To qualify, farmers must show at least a 30 percent loss in crop production or physical loss to livestock, livestock products, real estate or chattel property, the state ag department said.
“Farmers can borrow up to 100 percent of actual production or physical losses to a maximum amount of $500,000,” the news release said.
The deadline to apply for emergency loans is April 29, 2020.
The FSA office in Hancock County can be reached at 317-462-4501 and is located at 1101 W. Main St., Greenfield.
Farmers with existing FSA loans who are unable to make payments may be eligible to have certain payments deferred, according to the state ag department.
Roy Ballard, Purdue Extension Hancock County educator for agriculture and natural resources, said the offered assistance is warranted.
“In light of the conditions that we had early in this growing season, I think what’s being offered is very much in order,” he said.
Ballard said the conditions were unprecedented in the 14 years he has worked in Hancock County.
“We’ve had late springs before, delayed plantings and cold weather, but I have never seen — that I recall, anyway — this kind of a prolonged delay and just a really problematic spring,” he said.
Ballard is not yet sure what to expect for the harvest.
“We’re kind of in this time of being hopeful of what’s coming at the other end, but being realistic in knowing that we may not have the results we would like to have when the combines hit the fields,” he said. “Things are green and growing out there. If this was July, it would be wonderful. We’re just not sure when that frost is coming, how the crops are going to mature and what the yields are going to look like on the other side.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture deferred its decision on offering emergency loans in Indiana’s remaining 18 counties, according to the news release. But because those counties border one ore more primary disaster areas, they’re considered contiguous and allow farmers to be eligible for the same assistance.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb requested assistance from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in July.
“I am grateful that Secretary Perdue and his team recognized the hardships Hoosier farmers experienced this planting season,” Holcomb said in the release. “As a result of this designation, farmers in all 92 counties are now eligible for assistance, and I encourage those impacted to work with their local Farm Service Agency office.”
Indiana Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, the state’s secretary of agriculture and rural development, also called 2019 “an unprecedented year” for farmers and that she applauds the assistance becoming available.
Bruce Kettler, director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, said that while the assistance isn’t a cure-all, it’s “welcome news and will help those severely impacted.”
“Farmers, who have been doing this their entire lives, acknowledge this has been one of the toughest seasons on record, and we’re not in the clear yet,” Kettler said.
