1/15/00 - Agriculture Secretary Art Brown, Jr., is reminding Garden State farmers that they have until Feb. 25 to apply for assistance under the $20 million Agricultural Drought Relief Program (ADRP), created this fall by the Emergency Disaster Relief Act of 1999. Under the program being administered by NJDA, grants are available to farmers who experienced a 25 percent loss of one or more crops, solely as a result of the 1999 drought.
“Thanks to the governor and our state legislators, New Jersey has a meaningful drought relief program,” Brown said. “We hope to minimize the strain last summer’s drought has placed on farming operations this year and we urge eligible farmers to take advantage of all the state and federal programs available to them.”
To streamline the state grant program process for eligible farmers, NJDA is cooperating with USDA’s Farm Service Agency where farmers must go to register their 1999 losses and provide information about their farms, including acreage, production and crop yields.
FSA will use the information to determine whether farmers are qualified for financial assistance under the federal Crop Disaster Program while NJDA reviews the same information to determine their eligibility for an ADRP grant. With just one interview session, farmers will be able to apply for both federal disaster assistance and state compensation for 1999 drought-related losses.
The state ADRP includes a separate Hay Rebate Program to reimburse dairy and livestock producers who normally grow hay and forage crops to feed their own animals but whose crop yields were reduced by the drought.
This program does not involve the FSA. To participate in this program, farmers need only fill out the Hay Rebate Program application in the grant booklet they’ve received and return it to NJDA along with a completed W-9.
More than 9,000 grant application packages were mailed to farmers statewide in November. To date, more than 100 farmers have begun the grant application process. Complete details concerning the grant and rebate programs, along with the necessary forms, are available on NJDA’s Web site at http://www.state.nj.us/agricultureldroughtline.htm.