Farmers to receive $400,000
in emergency assistance
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe (both R-Maine) announced last Friday that the Farm Services Agency (FSA) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has agreed to their request to approve economic assistance to Maine farmers.
USDA-FSA informed the senators that it has approved a $400,000 grant through its Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) to help approximately 50 farmers who suffered crop damage during recent storms. The senators had originally asked for $500,000. The heavy rains and severe weather caused top soil in many fields to be completely washed away, which dramatically reduces the productive yield of acreage and can potentially reduce the value of that farmland.
Collins and Snowe sent a letter last month to Bruce Nelson, acting administrator of the Farm Service Agency at USDA in support of the Maine farmers’ request for assistance.
“This is welcome news and we truly appreciate the agency’s cooperation with our request for an expedited review of the request for ECP funding for these farmers,” the senators said in a joint statement. “July is a critical month for Maine’s potato industry, which is the backbone of the northern Maine economy. This funding will help farmers affected by last month’s devastating storms repair the damage to their fields and help prevent further losses.”
The $400,000 in emergency assistance does not include crop loss, but rather just damage to fields.
“If you start talking crop losses, it’s hard to say how much damage there’s been,” said Don Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board. “Obviously we know where there’s a wash that comes through a field, you’ve lost that, but some fields sustained damage that weren’t washes, some fields had water laying that would drown the seed out.
“Other things we don’t know yet is how much fertilizer has been lost, are the yields going to be down because of fertilizer leeching, etc. We won’t really know that until growers go and harvest their crop,” he said. “If there were low spots in the field where water lays, maybe those will come up and maybe not. It’s too early to tell. We know we’re going to have crop losses, but as far as yield loss, it’s too early to tell.”
Despite the severe weather conditions and the damaging rains that have fallen to date, Flannery is cautiously optimistic about this year’s crop.
“Our crop is made in July and August, so we’ll see,” he said. “Did we lose acres from what we planted? Yes, there’s no doubt about it. If Maine planted 55,000 acres [90 percent of which are planted in Aroostook County], we are not going to harvest 55,000 acres because we lost some.
“I don’t expect a bumper crop year or to set record yields here,” said Flannery, “but the negative impact is just too early to tell. We’ll have to wait and see.”
