Spending Bill Changes How Disasters Are Addressed

The spending bill signed Friday by President Trump has $2.4 billion to help ag producers impacted by the disasters we saw last year, specifically hurricanes.  U.S. Agriculture Department Chief Economist Rob Johanson says the bill does not create new USDA disaster programs, but expands existing ones.  For example, it removes previous Congressionally-mandated caps on total spending.

"Such as the emergency assistance for livestock honeybees and farm-raised fish...or ELAP. The cap on that was currently set at 20-million a year...that's been removed. It increases acreage limitation under the tree-assistance program...or the TAP program....previously limited to 500-acres...and that's bee raised to one thousand acres."

Some of these programs had caps on how much an individual producer could be compensated for disasters.  The bill removes those for the tree-assistance program and the livestock indemnity program.  Overall, Johanson said, it's an effort to provide more disaster help to more producers.

"So, we will be working with states to assess how those programs will be set up to provide assistance to those producers."