Texas farmers eligible for loans to cover drought losses

McALLEN – The Farm Service Agency is urging growers assailed by drought, high temperatures and wild fires this year to apply for emergency loans to cover their losses, the agency said recently.

Farmers in Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy counties are eligible for the loans, which could cover all the damages if farmers apply before July 2, 2010, said Arnulfo Lerma, service center farm loan manager, in a press release.

"As a general rule, a farmer must have suffered at least a 30 percent loss of production to be eligible," Lerma said. "Farmers should apply as soon as possible. Delays in applying could create backlogs in processing, with possible delays into the new farming season."

The weather wrecked Rio Grande Valley farmers for the second year in a row. This year, an extreme drought destroyed almost half of the Valley’s cotton, corn and sorghum crops, according to the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Weslaco

"The vast majority of losses occurred, of course, in dry land farming that depends solely on rainfall," said Luis Ribera, an economist with the Extension Service. "Even irrigated crops took a beating from the drought … they’re exposed to so much heat and … irrigation water is just too salty."

Officials estimate the total loss was about $19 million — smaller than the $25 million worth of crops that Hurricane Dolly destroyed last year. According to the report, Dolly wrecked lost 77 percent of the cotton crop, 34 percent of corn and 45 of grain sorghum.

Tom Vilsack, secretary of the USDA, designated 70 Texas counties, including the four Valley counties, as a natural disaster area in April 2009, making farmers in those counties eligible for the emergency loans with a 3.75 percent interest rate.

By May 2009, most of South Texas was either in extreme or exceptional drought, the two highest designations. By November, summer storms and annual fall rains had doused the area with enough moisture to nearly erase drought conditions.

As of this week, most of Cameron, Hidalgo and Starr Counties were not in drought conditions. In the few areas that persist, the drought is at the lowest levels of designation, according to the U.S. Draught Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"There’s been a dramatic improvement in the drought," said Buddy Martin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brownsville. "There’s still some abnormally dry and moderate drought."