WASHINGTON, D.C.(Press Release) – U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) Wednesday sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to request the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) develop a transparent set of crop insurance requirements for disaster assistance programs. This request comes after ambiguous guidance in previous programs required producers to return a portion of disaster assistance payments.
In recent years, Congress has provided billions of dollars in supplemental appropriations to USDA to fund temporary or ad hoc programs for losses not always covered under permanent programs. Because ad hoc programs respond to different natural disasters, participating producers encounter different eligibility rules and payment structures. In Phase 2 of the Emergency Reserve Program (ERP), USDA required applicants to list “all eligible yield-based crops that could have been affected by a qualifying disaster event.” As a consequence, many producers initially believed only impacted acres had to be listed on the application, leading many producers to unintentionally list an incorrect acreage amount on their application. After USDA discovered some applicants mistakenly did not list a farm’s entire acreage, the agency caused confusion by requiring these producers to return portions of ERP 2 payments.
On December 20, 2024, Congress passed additional disaster assistance to compensate producers for natural disaster losses sustained in 2023 and 2024.
“As USDA prepares to allocate additional disaster assistance, it is my hope the agency will consider the lessons of ERP 2 when preparing for the next application cycle,”Rounds wrote. “This would entail providing farmers with a transparent set of crop insurance requirements. American farmers and ranchers are the backbone of this nation and consistently deal with a number of uncontrollable factors, including extreme weather and volatile markets. Improving disaster assistance program guidelines will provide an additional certainty for American producers.”
Read the full letterHERE or below.