From a USDA News Release
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) reminds producers of the July 14 deadline to apply for both the Emergency Relief Program (ERP)Phase Two and the Pandemic Assistance Revenue Program (PARP). These revenue-based programs help offset revenue losses from 2020 and 2021 natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic.
ERP and PARP offer a holistic approach to disaster assistance and provide economic support for producers who bear the financial brunt of circumstances beyond their control.
“With a focus on revenue-based assistance, our goal is to provide all producers of eligible crops and livestock, including new and underserved producers, with the financial support they need to recover from the compounded, adverse economic impacts of market and weather instabilities,” said Blong Xiong, State Executive Director for FSA in California. “Applying this holistic approach to assistance acknowledges the myriad of crises that producers have faced in recent years, from the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic to the more frequent and intense natural disaster events that have devastated farms, ranches and communities across rural America.”
Eligibility: To be eligible for ERP Phase Two, producers must have suffered a decrease in allowable gross revenue in 2020 or 2021 due to necessary expenses related to losses of eligible crops from a qualifying natural disaster event. Assistance will be primarily to producers of crops that were not covered by Federal Crop Insurance or NAP, since crops covered by Federal Crop Insurance and NAP were included in the assistance under ERP Phase One. To be eligible for PARP, an agricultural producer must have been in the business of farming during at least part of the 2020 calendar year and had a 15% or greater decrease in allowable gross revenue for the 2020 calendar year, as compared to a baseline year.
FSA offers an online ERP tool and PARP tool that can help producers determine what is considered allowable gross revenue for each respective program. Through cooperative agreements with FSA, nine organizations are also providing free ERP Phase Two application assistance to producers across the United States and territories.