By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Special to the Leader
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsac Sept. 8 declared all 75 counties as agriculture natural disaster areas, eligible for low-interest emergency loans, but the man who administers the program locally urges farmers to apply early because the money could run out.
“Our fiscal year starts Oct. 1, but with budget cuts, it’s imperative to file expeditiously in fall and early spring,” according to Mark Petty, farm loan manager for the Lonoke Farm Service Agency. Petty oversees emergency loans for Pulaski, Prairie and Monroe as well as Lonoke counties. “We’ve been under disaster proclamations for the last three years,” Petty said, “but this year we’ve had back-to-back, continuing disaster from spring to September.”
Gov. Mike Beebe asked for the disaster declarations in July to help farmers who have suffered this year variously from floods, drought, heat, hail and high winds.
The filing deadline is May 7, 2012 to qualify for the 3.75 percent emergency loans.
The agency doesn’t know how much money will be available for loans yet, he said.
Qualification for loans de-pends on a farmer’s yield-per-acre for each crop, multiplied by the number of acres planted. That’s compared to the farmer’s yield for 2008-2010.
One problem for Arkansas farmers is that natural disasters have reduced yields for many farmers in each of those years as well, meaning this year’s shortfall may not be that great when compared.
To qualify, the yield on a crop must be off at least 30 percent, according to Petty.
“We’ve had a big hit,” said Lonoke County Chief Extension Agent Jeff Welch. “The heat itself has probably reduced grain yields from 10 percent to 20 percent, judging from the yields coming off the fields.
“Fields that produced 185-190 bushels per acre last year -- now those same fields grow 155 to 160 bushels per acre, even well-irrigated fields.
“Rice yields are below par by 10 or 15 percent,” he said, because of hot days and also high night time temperatures and panicle blight.
Row crops aren’t the only problems. Many pastures dried up, as did hayfields.
The heat stresses the dairy cows, which then produce less milk. Cattle operations are suffering too. Many producers will have to buy hay to feed over the winter and calves that should have been putting on one to one-and-a-half pounds per day are putting on as little as a quarter of a pound per day because of the heat.
He said that so far there hadn’t been much of a cattle sell off because recent rains have created forage, but they will have to buy more expensive hay for cows they keep to overwinter.
High temperatures have also hurt the cotton crop. The lower cotton bolls are putting on fiber but the upper ones have been retarded. Cotton farmers should be defoliating and picking cotton by now, but they are waiting for the top bolls to fill out, Welch said.
Because farmers in counties adjacent to those declared eligible for agriculture disaster relief are also eligible, 36 parishes and counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas are also eligible, according to Petty.
