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WASHINGTON,
Aug. 4, 2022 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has processed
more than 255,000 applications for the new Emergency Relief Program (ERP).
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. By breaking-down agency barriers, using
existing data across USDA and pre-filled applications, USDA’s Farm Service
Agency (FSA) in cooperation with the Risk Management Agency (RMA) has 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,” said USDA Under Secretary for Farm
Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie. “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.”
The design of
ERP Phase One allowed for an expedited process that saved time for staff
and producers. FSA was able to begin disbursing payments to producers
within days of rolling out the program when under the predecessor program
lengthy applications and processing were required before making payments.
FSA county offices can process almost nine ERP applications in the time it
took to process one application for the Wildfire and Hurricane Indemnity
Program — Plus (WHIP+), the predecessor program for ad hoc disaster
assistance. This equates to 88% less time to process applications and a
reduction of more than one million staff hours for implementation of ERP
compared with WHIP+. While not specifically tracked, we expect the savings
for producers to be at least as significant as they previously would
previously have had a significant burden to collect records and often sit
across from the local staff as the data is entered.
These process
improvements also enhanced the customer experience for farmers by reducing
the number of producer trips to FSA county offices and allowing producers
to spend less time completing forms so they could focus more on their
agricultural operations. In addition, the ERP program design greatly
diminished the risk potential for errors and leveraged the existing RMA and
Federal Crop Insurance loss adjustment and verification processes. With
more applications approved, more dollars distributed, and more dollars paid
per application in a shorter timeframe, the streamlined application process
developed to deliver ERP has significantly outperformed the previous
implementation of WHIP+. FSA also has paid more than $1 billion to
historically underserved producers.
Emergency
Relief Payments to Date
The efforts to
streamline, improve responsiveness and work across traditional
agency-borders goes beyond just the recent ERP process. FSA mailed
pre-filled ERP applications to producers of commodities covered by federal
crop insurance in late May and has since paid producers with eligible
losses more than $6 billion. Pre-filled ERP applications were mailed to
producers with Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) coverage
last week, and so far, FSA has already issued $35.9 million in payments to
producers with eligible losses. NAP-related ERP payments also were not
factored and are being made in full from the start to speed and target
assistance to the small and underserved producers that commonly rely on NAP
coverage. Also, earlier this year, staff processed more than 100,000
payments through the Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) and paid
eligible producers more than $601.3 million for 2021 grazing losses within
days of the program announcement.
ERP Data Now
Available Online
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. FSA
will update the dashboard on Monday each week.
More
Information
ERP and the
previously announced ELRP are funded by the Extending Government Funding
and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act, which President Biden signed
into law in 2021. The law provided $10 billion to help agricultural
producers impacted by wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, winter storms and
other eligible disaster events experienced during calendar years 2020 and
2021.
For more
information on ERP and ELRP eligibility, program provisions for
historically underserved producers as well as Frequently Asked Questions,
producers can visit FSA’s Emergency Relief webpage.
Additional USDA
disaster assistance information can be found on farmers.gov, including
the Disaster Assistance Discovery
Tool, Disaster-at-a-Glance fact sheet
(PDF, 1.4 MB) and Farm Loan Discovery Tool.
For FSA and Natural Resources Conservation Service programs, producers
should contact their local USDA Service Center.
For assistance with a crop insurance claim, producers and landowners should
contact their crop insurance agent.
USDA touches
the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. Under the
Biden-Harris administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system
with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production,
fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and
nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of
income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry
practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy
capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the
Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more
representative of America. To learn more, visit usda.gov.
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