SE Nebraska Counties Designated Disaster Areas Due To Drought

By Gordon Hopkins USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Secretary Thomas Vilsack has designated five Nebraska counties as primary natural disaster areas, based on the intensity of the ongoing drought during the growing season. Those counties are Jefferson, Gage, Thayer, Nuckolls and Morrill.According to the U.S. Drought Monitor (see http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/), these counties suffered from a drought intensity value during the growing season of 1) D2 Drought-Severe for eight or more consecutive weeks or 2) D3 Drought-Extreme or D4 Drought-Exceptional. In a letter to Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen dated October 15, 2024, Vilsack cited 7 CFR § 759.5, the Secretarial disaster area determination and notification process. The letter also said, “In accordance with section 321(a) of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, additional areas of your state and an adjacent state are named as contiguous disaster counties.”Another 14 Nebraska counties are named as continuous disaster counties: Banner, Clay, Johnson, Pawnee, Sheridan, Box Butte, Fillmore, Lancaster, Saline, Webster, Cheyenne, Garden, Otoe and Scotts Bluff.Vilsack also named four contiguous counties in an adjacent state: Jewell, Marshall, Republic and Washington, all in Kansas. A Secretarial disaster designation makes farm operators in primary counties and those counties contiguous to such primary counties eligible to be considered for Farm Service Agency (FSA) emergency loan assistance, provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of a Secretarial disaster declaration to apply for emergency loans. FSA considers each emergency loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of production losses on the farm and the security and repayment ability of the operator.Local USDA FSA offices can provide affected farmers with further information.

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