News Release

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) announced today that Congress has authorized disaster assistance to crops lost during the 2007 crop year. The Omnibus Appropriations Bill provides an estimated $600 million to extend the crop disaster assistance programs to the entire 2007 crop year throughout the southeast. The president is expected to sign the bill.

This extension makes emergency financial assistance available to farmers who incurred losses for the 2005, 2006, or 2007 crop due to damaging weather, crop diseases, harmful insects, or planting interruptions. To be eligible for assistance, producers must have lost or been prevented from planting crops on or before December 31, 2007.  The bill extends the Crop Disaster Assistance Program, the Livestock Compensation Program, and the Livestock Indemnity Program, all of which are administered by the federal Farm Services Agency.

Spratt came to Bennettsville during September to meet with Pee Dee farmers at Marlboro Electric Cooperative, and to assess for himself the seriousness of the situation. He saw cotton with barely formed bolls and soybean plants with no pods. He later told those gathered at Marlboro Electric Coop that “the impact of the drought is evident everywhere: on corn, cotton, soybeans, and hay; and in pastures with very little grass left for grazing.”

On his return to Congress, Spratt joined with other congressmen from the southeast to find how funds could be appropriated. Relief had been previously provided in the Agriculture Disaster Assistance Act of 2007, which authorized $3 billion for crop disaster assistance, but required that the losses occur on or before February 28, 2007. The bill Spratt supported and helped pass extends disaster assistance beyond February 28, 2007 to December 31, 2007.

“We have been working for weeks to secure this assistance, and I am pleased to have had a hand in helping it pass,” said Spratt. “This will provide much needed relief to South Carolina farmers. It is also a relief to me, because the Omnibus Appropriations Bill may have been the last moving vehicle to which we could have attached this extension.”

The extension of federal drought assistance was not sought by the President, or included in any legislation that the President sent to Congress. It was added by Congress.

On October 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated 33 counties in South Carolina as primary disaster counties. This designation allows farmers in all of the counties in the Fifth Congressional District to be eligible for low-interest emergency loans from U.S.D.A Farm Service Agencies. The Omnibus Appropriations Bill will provide direct payments.

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