Well, anytime you get into a dry period like we are experiencing now, livestock producers start asking questions about Livestock Feed Assistance being activated.
Many producers are saying they heard or read something about it being available. That is true for many south Mississippi counties and even some north of Jackson. But it has not happened in Tallahatchie County, yet.
Could it happen here? Yes, if it stays this dry and we continue to get no rain or below normal rainfall. It is all based on the National Drought Monitor. Currently, the drought monitor shows an area that is form the Louisiana state line all the way to Carroll and Montgomery counties, heading north about one row of counties a week.
Will it get here? No one knows at this point. But unless it does, there will be no Livestock Feed Program in Tallahatchie County. So, this is to be continued.
Emergency Relief Program Phase 2 payments were released last week. Very, very few producers had a 35% loss in income from 2018-19 to 2020-21, so we only have a few producers qualify. These payments end the 2020-2021 Emergency Relief Program that first was passed by Congress two years ago, on Sept. 30, 2021, in a continuing resolution to keep the government running. Phase one was last summer, from June until July 2022.
Phase 2 sign-up started on Jan. 25, 2023, and was to end on June 2, 2023. However, the secretary of agriculture extended the sign-up until July 14, 2023. Seven producers in the county filed applications, and five were eligible for some kind of benefits.
Accompanying the ERP 2 sign-up was a Pandemic Assistance Relief Program. The dates for that sign-up were exactly the same as the ERP 2. We only had 17 applications for that program, and not one word has been received to date on when any payments might come out of PARP.
You can see there was not much disaster benefit provided in Tallahatchie County under any of these programs. Why? Because it was so hard to qualify for any benefits for losses, as it was all based on gross income and not crop yields or crop losses. Hopefully, that is the last we will see of those types of disaster programs.
