USDA: Emergency Relief Program delivers timely assistance to commodity and specialty crop producers

The USDA has processed more than 255,000 applications for its new Emergency Relief Program, according to a news release.

USDA has made approximately $6.1 billion, to date, in payments to commodity and specialty crop producers to help offset eligible losses from eligible 2020 and 2021 natural disasters, according to the release.

By breaking-down agency barriers,  the USDA’s Farm Service Agency and Risk Management Agency have been able to expediently provide economic relief and save producers and staff over a million hours of time.

“The expedient manner in which these emergency relief programs have been developed and executed ensures swift delivery of program benefits to producers, responsible use of taxpayer dollars and equates to time savings for our customers and for USDA staff,” USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie said in the release. “Reducing the time spent collecting information we already have elsewhere at USDA or through crop insurance means our team has more bandwidth to reach and support new customers. Our streamlined, successful ERP implementation is a testament to the USDA team’s creativity, dedication, and willingness to break down traditional divisions between agencies and resolve complicated information technology challenges to further the shared goal of better serving farmers and ranchers.”

A new public-facing dashboard on the ERP webpage has information on ERP payments that can be sorted by crop type – specialty or non-specialty, specific commodities and state, according to the release. FSA will update the dashboard on Monday each week.