 Welcome to the Drought Relief Program webinar, and it's a joint effort by NDSU Extension and the Farm Service Agency in North Dakota. And I want to introduce myself. My name is Ron Hogan. I'm with Farm Management with the Extension Agri-Business Department and also Miranda Meeam. She's with the Extension Animal Science. We'll be the moderators today. We're going to be covering a lot of ground today. We're only going to touch on some of the topics in just an overview. There's a lot of information to be covered, and so we're going to get right to it. So first I will introduce Laura Heinrich from the FSA State Office, and she will go through the program and the outline of what we're going to cover. So take it away. Thanks, Ron. As Ron said, I'm Laura Heinrich. I do work for the Farm Service Agency in the State Office here in North Dakota. I want to thank all of you for joining us for this drought relief webinar. Today we're going to, as Ron said, we're going to provide a brief overview of Farm Service Agency Drought Assistant Programs. I specifically will be covering disaster designation requests and crop disaster, secretarial disaster designations and the assistance that's triggered with those designations. Following my short presentation, Ryan Limbaum, who works with our Farm Loan Program Division in the State Office, will be covering emergency loans. Wanda Brayton with the Livestock and Conservation Division will be covering the Livestock Forage Program, or LFP, the Emergency Assistance for Livestock Honeybees and Farm Raised Fish Program, or ELAP, she'll also be covering the Emergency Conservation Program, ECP, and also the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP, Emergency Hang and Grazing. Once she's completed with her presentation, Ron Haugen will come back on, and he's going to cover the NDSU Livestock Forage Calculator. So in regards to secretary disaster designations, they're triggered in three different ways. The first trigger is the fast track designation for drought, and that's what we're seeing here in North Dakota right now, and so we'll cover the counties that have already triggered based on the U.S. Drought Monitor. The second way that a county can be triggered as a secretarial disaster designation is if they have a crop that suffered a 30% production loss, and that determination is made by the county emergency board, and they submit a request to our state office, and then the state emergency board would forward that request if they agree with it up to the national office for a secretarial disaster designation. The third option for receiving a secretarial disaster designation is if maybe a crop doesn't there's not a crop in that county that has a 30% loss, but there was a disaster event that caused a producer to suffer a 30% loss of a crop on their farm, and that producer is not able to obtain credit from any other lending institution except for the farm service agency. So with those, those are the three ways that they can receive a secretarial disaster designation and Wanda, you can go to the next screen. So what actually does a secretarial disaster designation do for a producer? There's three different potential items or programs that a secretarial disaster designation can trigger assistance for. The first is a farm service agency emergency loans which Ryan will be covering after this short information on the designation process. Also small business association loans may be triggered with a disaster designation and then also FSA disaster programs. Right now there are no programs specifically based on a secretarial disaster designation, but in the past Congress has used the secretarial disaster designations to open up eligibility of certain crop loss programs. So with the, to cover a little more detail with how we receive our fast track, fast track drought designations, they're nearly automatic. It's based on the US drought monitor, and it occurs when a drought intensity of at least a D2 level drought occurs for eight consecutive weeks or the county experiences a D3 or extreme drought level at any time during the growing season. So this drought intensity must occur during the growing season, and even if a small portion of a county is affected by that D2 for eight consecutive weeks or a D3 drought level, the whole entire county would be eligible for a secretarial disaster designation. This drought monitor is updated on Thursdays of every week and it is posted out on the website under droughtmonitor.unl.edu, so you can look at that every week to see where counties are at with their drought designations. And like I said, Wanda uses this drought designation for eligibility for some of her programs and she'll cover that in more detail. So right now in North Dakota, these are the counties that are eligible for emergency loans due to secretarial disaster designation. All the counties in red are primary disaster counties, and then those counties that are in yellow are contiguous disaster counties, and both primary and contiguous counties are eligible for emergency loans. With that, I'll turn it over to Ryan. Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Laura. My name is Ryan Lindbaum. I'm a farm wood specialist here in the North Dakota State Office. We're going to be talking today about emergency loans. As Laura mentioned, you know, basically once an area is declared a disaster area, producers can qualify for an emergency loan. So basically an emergency loan is to help recover from any sort of production or physical loss due to drought, flooding, any other natural disasters, et cetera. Emergency loan funds can be used to restore or replace essential property, pay all our production costs associated with a disaster year, pay essential family living, and then reorganize the farming operation and refinance certain debts. So what I mean there for certain debts is basically farm related debts, not personal debts. Producers can borrow up to 100% of their actual production loss. Basically the maximum loan is $500,000. Basically who's eligible? Basically those producers that are eligible are owned or operate land in a county declared a disaster area, and also contiguous counties. So basically if they're touching the neighboring county, they would also qualify. And if you saw the map earlier, basically there's very few counties right now in North Dakota that don't qualify for emergency loans. Other eligibility requirements, they have to be an established farm operator and have experienced the farm operation, FB US citizens, and they have to basically suffered a 30% production loss and or physical loss to livestock, livestock products, real estate, chattel property, et cetera. So eligibility requirements, basically they have to have an acceptable credit history. They do also have to receive denials from commercial lenders. So for an example, loans over $300,000 need two denial letters. Loans under $300,000 need one denial letter. And if it's an emergency loan under $100,000, it can get waived by the local FSA loan official. They must provide collateral for the loan and they have to have repayment ability. Other requirements, they have to have acceptable farm records. They have to develop a farm plan, you know, with their local lending staff. And they also may be required to participate in financial production training and obtain crop insurance. For collateral, basically emergency loans must be fully collateralized. The collateral depends obviously on many factors like the loan purpose, repayment ability, and other individual circumstances. One unique aspect though for this emergency loan program is if they can applicants cannot provide adequate collateral, you know, we could look at their repayment ability as a collateral. So that is a little different than normal commercial lenders. There are basically two kinds of losses. There's a physical loss and a production loss. A perfect example of a physical loss would be like if our tornado went through, you know, and damaged real estate, that would be like a physical loss. Normally in North Dakota, we handle production losses where basically the drought affected like crop production, you know, and so that we, I'd say 90 some percent we do as production losses. The terms, typically it's a one to seven year term for the emergency loan. It depends on the loan purpose, you know, repayment ability. In circumstances, we can go up to 20 years. And then like a physical loss, typically our 30 year loans, but we can also go to like a 40 year term. Application deadlines, okay, so once we receive the designation, the producers have basically eight months to apply for an emergency loan. And for further information there, we do have a website. You can go to farmers.gov or you can also contact your local FSA office. And so here's our local on the next slide down. Here's our local farm loan offices listed by alphabetical order. And with that, I will have our next speaker will be Wanda Brayton. She's the conservation and livestock director. So I will turn it over to her. Thank you, Ryan. As Ryan stated, I am the conservation and livestock disaster program here at the North Dakota State Office. So my program or my divisions handle all of the livestock disaster programs that we implement with FSA. And some of those that I'm going to talk about today, I've just listed here. We'll cover real quickly some LFP. Just like Laura talked about earlier, I'm going to have some information about the light or the emergency livestock assistance program. I do have some information about the emergency conservation program and then also the CRP emergency hay and grazing provisions. The first slide that I have is that when we're talking about program eligibility, the livestock disaster programs that are administered by FSA based their program eligibility for drought on the severity of a drought rating, according to that U.S. drought monitor during that normal grazing period. And that's some of the information that Laura talked about a little bit earlier in North Dakota, the normal grazing period began on April 15th and it does end on October 15th. I've included this slide just to show you that based on the April 13th, 2021 U.S. drought monitor, we had 43 North Dakota counties that became eligible to implement LFP based on the D3 extreme drought designation. And you can see that that's what's highlighted in red on this map. Another seven counties were in the first week of the normal grazing period at a D2 drought status. Eligibility for LFP, for instance, requires that a county be in at least a D2 drought status for eight consecutive weeks. So if we look at the next slide, this is as the U.S. drought monitor as of June one. And you can see that all but seven counties are eligible for LFP and four of those seven counties have been in a D2 drought status for at least seven weeks, meaning that if they stay in this condition for another week, they also would be eligible to start implementing LFP. We only have three counties in North Dakota right now that are not under a severe drought designation. And you can see those three in the southeast corner of the state. So the first program that I'm going to talk about is the livestock forage program. And we're going to take a look at both drought and wildfire eligibility for this program. So LFP provides payments to eligible livestock producers, owners, and contract growers who have covered livestock and who are also producers of grace, forage, crop acreage, both native and improved pastureland with permanent vegetative cover. It covers those grazing losses or those producers that have suffered grazing losses due to a qualifying drought or fire on federally managed rangeland during the normal grazing period for that county. Producers can receive LFP payments for grazing losses due to drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor status, and or for fire on rangeland managed by a federal agency, but not for both the same losses on the same acreages. During the grazing period in the calendar year for which the benefits are being requested, eligible livestock producers may receive assistance for grazing losses that occur on land that has been certified as native or improved pastureland, or for crops that have been planted specifically with the intention of grazing by the covered livestock. A list of those eligible commodities are listed here for your review, and you can see that it's those small grains, forage, sorghum, and annual ryegrass. Just a note under there is that corn stocks and grain sorghum stocks are not eligible for LFP. As I mentioned earlier, eligible livestock producers may receive LFP benefits for grazing losses on land that is physically located in a county that is rated by the U.S. Drought Monitor as being in a minimum drought status of D2 for at least eight consecutive weeks or greater. If part of the county qualifies according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, then the entire county is eligible to implement LFP. For eligible grazing losses due to fire, the livestock producer must have suffered grazing losses on rangeland that is managed by the federal agency, and because of the fire, the livestock producer has received notification from that federal agency that the normally permitted livestock are prohibited from grazing a managed rangeland. The county, the local county committees will require a copy of the notification from the federal agency for which they were prohibited from grazing the land when a producer files their LFP application for grazing losses due to fire. So that's one thing to keep in mind that we would have to see a copy of that notification. To be considered an eligible livestock producer for LFP, the producer must have owned, leased, entered into a contract to own or be a contract borrower during the 60 calendar days prior to the beginning date of that qualifying drought and provide grazing land or pasture land for the covered livestock as of the date of the qualifying drought or fire. I'm sorry, that is either physically located in a county affected by the qualifying drought during the normal grazing period for that specific forage crop acreage in that county or the rangeland managed by the federal agency for which the otherwise eligible livestock producer is prohibited by that federal agency from grazing the normally permitted livestock because of that qualifying drought. So it's one or the other. Covered livestock include the following grazing animals and it's such things as non-adult beef and dairy cattle, beefalo, buffalo, and bison, along with alpacas deer, elk, emus, equine, goats, llamas, reindeer, or sheep that would normally have been grazing the eligible pasture or the grazing, eligible grazing or pasture land during the normal grazing period. And it's important to understand that unwing livestock do not meet the definition of a grazing animal and therefore they would be ineligible for LFP benefits. The livestock must have been produced and maintained for commercial use or be livestock that were used for producing livestock products for commercial use. The livestock must not have been or had been in a feedlot as part of their normal business operation for that producer and again so again they just have to be normally grazing animals to qualify. The producers with grazing losses on land that is physically located in an eligible county must file both the FSA 578 or acreage report and the LFP application for payment in their administrative county office. The deadline to file that application for payment for LFP is 30 calendar days after the end of the calendar year in which the grazing losses occurred. So basically eligible producers would have until January 30th of 2022 and they must include all their supporting documentation. The next topic that we're going to talk about is our ELAP program specifically about drought for water transportation. So ELAP provides emergency assistance to eligible producers of livestock of honeybees and farm-raised fish that have suffered losses because of disease adverse weather or other conditions. ELAP covers those losses that are not covered under other disaster assistance type programs. So the losses must be a direct result of an eligible adverse weather or loss condition such as but not limited to the following that I have listed here and you'll notice on there when we're talking about drought it's for water transportation only and it also includes for wildfire. Eligible livestock losses include grazing losses, feed losses, additional costs of purchasing livestock feed above normal quantities. It also provides additional costs for transporting the water in cases of drought and additional costs associated with gathering livestock to treat or to inspect cattle for tick fever. For grazing losses the loss must have been incurred during the normal grazing period of April 15th through October 15th on eligible grazing land that had that are physically located in the counties that suffered the loss. For feed losses this covered losses to purchase or mechanically harvested forage that was destroyed because of an eligible loss condition. Eligible feed losses do not need to occur during the normal grazing period and so for an example if a wildfire occurred on non-federal lands and destroyed a producer's hay bales then the losses could potentially be covered by ELAP under the feed loss. Another eligible livestock loss is the additional cost of transporting water to eligible livestock due to an eligible drought condition. The cost must be incurred on eligible grazing land that are physically located in a county that have suffered from an eligible drought condition. In order to receive benefits the water would need to be transported to grazing lands that had an adequate water source prior to the drought in which the water transportation wouldn't normally be required. When a participant claims additional costs resulting from transporting water to eligible livestock the participant must provide verifiable or liable documentation of the cost of transporting that water. To be eligible for assistance under ELAP a livestock producer must provide eligible grazing land during the normal grazing period for the eligible livestock and they must have suffered a loss in the physical county which the eligible adverse weather occurred. They also have to file a timely filed application and they have to report their acreage on an FSA 578 crop acreage report. The participant must file in their administrating county a notice of loss within 30 calendar days of when that loss occurred and along with an application for payment by 30 calendar days after the end of that applicable calendar year or by January 30th of 22. The next program that I'm going to talk about is our emergency conservation program otherwise known as ECP. So our ECP program that provides emergency funding and technical assistance to our producers to rehabilitate farmland and conservation structures that have been damaged by natural disasters and implement emergency water conservation measures in periods of severe drought. ECP is a costier program that is subject to the availability of funds and requires that the county emergency board complete an assessment of damage in the event that a natural disaster occurred and they have to request funding from our national office for the implementation of the program within the county or area that's been affected by that disaster event. In the event of a wildfire ECP may provide assistance to repair or replace livestock fences back to the pre-disaster condition land that is owned by a federal or state entity would not be eligible for ECP assistance. In times of severe drought ECP assistance provides assistance to producers at a 75% cost share level or 90% cost share level for underserved farmers or ranchers in order to install items such as wells tanks or other water measures to supply emergency water to livestock during periods of severe drought along with installing water measures for orchards or vineyards. A severe drought condition exists when available water from sources that currently are being used for livestock or orchards and vineyards have been reduced below the normal reduced below normal and survival is unlikely without additional water source. Only those farms or ranches that had adequate livestock watering systems or facilities or adequate irrigation systems for orchards and vineyards before the drought would be eligible for ECP. A drought related problem must exist and the approved practice must be installed primarily to deal with the drought related problem and there must be adequate range or pasture land residue for the livestock in the area to be served by the proposed water facility at the time of the request so the livestock would have to be out on that grazing land in order for that application to be approved. If a county is approved to implement ECP due to the drought wildfire or other natural disaster a signup period would be announced using newsletters news releases any of our media outlets and then the eligible producers must file and it's an application for cost share assistance in their administrative county office prior to the signup deadline. Normally those signup deadlines are between 30 and 60 days and then the producer must not start the project prior to the completion of an environmental review if ground disturbance is to occur and just knowing that starting a practice prior to the cost share approval is at the producer's own risk. I did make a note under here that if a producer applied for and received funding through another state or federal cost share program then the project is not eligible for ECP and this also includes the North Dakota Water Commission program that is currently been made available in North Dakota. One of the last the last program that I'm going to talk about is our CRP Emergency Hain and Grazing. So our conservation reserve program that is a federally funded volunteer program that contracts with producers so that the environmental environmentally sensitive egg land is not farmed but instead it's used for those conservation benefits. So participants are required to establish them long-term resource conserving plant species such as approved grasses or trees to control soil erosion improve water quality and develop a wildlife habitat. In return FSA provides participants with rental payments and cost share assistance. Hain and Grazing of CRP acreage is authorized under certain conditions to improve the quality and performance of the CRP cover or to provide emergency relief to livestock producers due to certain natural disasters. Now there are two different types of Hain and Grazing authorizations. We have non-emergency measures and we also have emergency measures. Under emergency Hain and Grazing it may be authorized to provide relief to livestock producers in areas that have been affected by severe drought or some other similar natural disaster. Counties are approved for emergency Hain and Grazing due to drought conditions on a county by county basis when the county is designated as a level two drought severe for at least eight consecutive weeks or greater according to the US drought monitor. If a county triggers for LFP eligibility based on the D2 drought status for eight weeks or greater or a D3 or D4 then CRP participants may request to perform immediate emergency grazing during the primary nesting season based on the following factors. They must submit a written request to conduct the emergency grazing. All emergency practices would be eligible in order to do this. The producers would be limited to 50% of the carrying capacity on the acreage grazed and they must not exceed 90 consecutive days. Now when we're talking about the primary nesting season we are talking about a period that starts in April 15th and runs through August 1st. So as I said if the county triggers for LFP then producers may start to implement emergency grazing immediately with an approved grazing plan through NRCS. So what they would need to do is contact their local county offices request to conduct the activity sign their they need to sign a grazing plan and then once they receive approval then they can start grazing their CRP. We do have emergency grazing outside the primary nesting season and the following criteria applies to that. Again that producer has to submit a written request to conduct the emergency grazing. They still need to have approval of the NRCS grazing plan. Again all conservation practices would be eligible for emergency grazing after that August 1st date. They cannot start until August 1st, but then all livestock there is no 50% of the carrying capacity requirement and then the livestock must be removed by September 30th or when the stubble height identified in their specific grazing plan is reached and there is no payment reduction for this and again I put in the primary nesting season that it again starts on April 15th and ends on August 1st. Our emergency hayne is only authorized outside the primary nesting season based on the following. If a county is eligible for LFP only certain conservation practices are eligible to be hayed. Submission again the producer would have to submit a written request to conduct the emergency hayne. They still need approval of the NRCS conservation plan. They cannot start the emergency hayne until the August 1st date. The emergency hayne would end on August 31st and then all bails must be removed from CRP by September 15th. Under the emergency hayne there is no payment reduction for that, but again if the county is eligible for LFP the conservation practices are limited. Basically they go back to the general signup practices of your standard warm season or cool season grasses. No wetland practices or any of our specialty conservation practices would be eligible for emergency hayne. We still have our non-emergency hayne that again is only authorized outside the primary nesting season and again the producer would have to submit a written request to conduct the non-emergency hayne. They would need approval of a modified NRCS conservation plan. They still can't start until August 1st, but can't start until August 1st. The non-emergency hayne ends on August 31st. All bails must be removed from the CRP by September 15th. 25% of the contract acreage must remain unhayed and there is a 25% payment reduction for this. For non-emergency hayne it cannot be conducted more than once in every three years, but again this allows more flexibility for those producers because it opens up all practices. So you're not limited to the practices under the non-emergency, but again you would have to check with the FSA local office to find out whether or not you're within your rotation in order to do this. The CRP action is where the CRP participants seek an approval for either the emergency hayne or grazing or non-emergency hayne or grazing. They must file a request to hay or graze the CRP acreage before the activity can be conducted. They need to identify the acres to be hayed or grazed. They have to obtain a modified conservation plan and record the intended hayne or grazing use on a FSA form CRP 117. We do have a terms of conditions for the activity that must be signed and then approval from the county committee is required before the activity can start. And just one note before I turn this over to Ron is that we do have another program that would be our livestock indemnity program. That is basically for livestock deaths. There are certain conditions where producers who have suffered losses to livestock may be eligible for extreme heat. In those cases you would definitely want to visit with your local FSA office and visit with them about the criteria if you have suffered any losses because especially with the heat losses we've had in the last couple of weeks. And also there is some eligibility based on eligible disease. So again if you're suffering livestock deaths because of anthrax due to the drought I would encourage you to visit with your local county FSA. With that I'm going to turn it over to the farm management specialist of agribusiness and applied economics to Ron Haugen. Thank you. Thank you very much Wanda. And if you move to my next slide I was going to show you the map of where we're sitting now with the LFP payments. There you go. Here's where you were about three weeks ago and the way the LFP payments work, as she mentioned any part of the county is if any part of the county is affected the whole county gets a payment. And there is some at this point three weeks ago there were some counties with zero and then the next according to the way it works it goes to one payment then three then four then five and the most payments you can have is five. Okay just remember that. So if you go to the next slide that will show um now this show I guess the I guess it got kind of messed up on my legend on the bottom there but here we go as of this as a six three twenty one all of those counties got to be in in a four payment category trail and cast came in at one whereas ransom sergeant and richland still are at zero. Okay so the next slide um this is kind of a projection now so the county is there with the with the with with with the hash marks on if they remain in d4 for for one more week there's I think 17 counties there they will go to five payments town or county if they remain in deep and d4 drought for two more weeks so with that with the with the little diamonds there in in town or county then they will go to five five payments and that's the way it sits right now. If you apply for these payments with fsa the computers are not set up to pay you let's say four or five payments at this point it's only three payments and they haven't got their their computers programmed yet but eventually you will get paid no problem there. So I wanted to talk next about the NDSU LFP calculator and here's the link to our website where you can get that it is an excel tool that you can download and estimate your payments by putting your information in that's a very simple tool so the next slide shows the first part of what you enter it's very easy easy to do you just fill in the the the yellow blocks and everything is programmed accordingly you put in your state it will be for North Dakota South Dakota and Montana you can pick either of those three states and once you pick your state you pick your county now this example here just shows an example for burley county and here are the various species okay so let's say this just assume that somebody has 100 acres of 100 ahead of beef and and 50 non-adult beef with 500 pounds or more you simply it simply multiplies 100 times that that that rate the monthly rate of 3118 that's set by the USDA and on the on the on non-adult 50 pounds or more 50 times 23.38 and you can see total on the bottom line a then shows 4287 dollars okay so remember that number 4287 now the next slide next part of the calculator there's where you enter in your acres so let's say in this simple example that you have what 1100 acres of native pasture and the program will automatically pull in based on burley county the county we have chosen nine animal units and then you get your carrying capacity times the rate and for non-improved for improved acres 200 acres for this example and it pulls it pulls in the animal unit carrying capacity and there are totals for 3000 5369.82 now comparing to that other number of 4287 the next block there on the bottom it takes the lesser of a or b so it'll take 4287 then multiple it multiplies the by the national factor of 60 percent you get a monthly payment of 2572.20 based on burley county and the and the the drought monitor which is now set at four payments it just basically multiplies four times 2572 you get 10288 and then there's a sequestration factor that's subtracted off so the the estimated payment would be 9702. Now I probably will not be updating this this LFP calculator right now I think I'm going to wait a week until we until we see how the how the next drought monitor shows and then but if you want to run through this and you're assuming you're going to get five payments you simply put in your county and take that whatever that word is that 2572 and multiply times your instead of multiplying by four you multiply by five and a very simple process and this is on our website and you can download it and any questions just let us know so with that I think we're done with our presentation I will change I will turn it over to Miranda and she's going to talk about some resources that we have some further resources that we have available and then we will get to your questions. Thank you Ron so for all things drought related sorry I muted myself so all things drought related you can access the NDSU extension drought website I drop the link in the chat and mostly other resources through FSA are on there as well as well as things and we focus on livestock programs and livestock a lot today but there's a crop related information there as well and obviously as we move forward and more information and more programs are released that information will be put on that page as well and then specific to USDA and FSA we have there's a fact sheet here for a brochure about their disaster assistance programs and disaster recovery resources and the best if you're looking for more information about those programs the best bet is contacting your local office so there's a link again and I had put that in the chat box earlier for finding your local office and that contact for that local office and again as always for updates from FSA about drought programs or any other types of programs that are available within your county sign up for that delivery and you will be notified through text or email whatever your preferences are to receive those notifications and that's really all I have about drought resources I know there's a couple questions about the recording the recording for today will be on our extension website probably take us a day or two to get it edited and uploaded as well as the handout and it will be under on our drought page under livestock and government programs and here is that link for that as well and if you have any specific questions don't that we don't cover our information you can't find there feel free to reach out to your extension agent or your local FSA office again and that we can start questions I know we have quite a few of them popping up in the chat box put those again or put those in the q&a so that we can make sure that we don't miss them because there's a lot of other things in that chat box I can start the first question here specific to LFP what is the payment policy regarding horses and when our horse is eligible for LFP payments thank you Miranda so horses that are maintained and produced for commercial use are eligible under equine so if you are in the business of breeding and raising horses for sale then you would be eligible or they would be eligible as grazing animals as long as they're grazing the pastures as well if you're in let me just expand on that horses would not be eligible if they're only maintained for recreation purposes and not for commercial use so if you have a horses that are grazing alongside your livestock but they're only maintained for pleasure then they would not be eligible for LFP okay I was looking in the q&a box here the question is we own pasture land but it's all leased elk and farmers who are leasing apply for LFP and I'm assuming yes for the LFP you have you have to have risk and control in the grazing lands so if you are leasing it to another person so you no longer have control or risk in that crop you would not be eligible another question when can producers expect their payment for the LFP program county offices are busy right now taking applications and getting those applications reviewed and approved payments have started going out already as Ron talked about payments have been issued for those eligible LFP counties at three monthly payments the reason that if you are in a d4 status that you have not received your fourth monthly payment is it really boils down to the fact that the us drought monitor has a reporting system that was actually hacked into and it created some havoc with that report getting transferred transmitted over to USDA in order for us to determine eligibility so that our software can read that so if you are eligible and you've made your application you will get paid at three monthly payments as of right now once that software issue is corrected with the us drought monitor then counties or those producers will automatically receive their additional fourth or fifth month payment okay um are i i do think we answer this but our multi multi species cover crops for grazing in the in the LFP yes some small grains if they were planted with the intention of grazing only okay but i think the question is more specific if you had a multi so you had a cover crop cocktails so you had some something that had small grains but also warm seasons together for the intention of grazing okay with the intention of grazing uh we have mixed forage in there as an eligibility criteria well there's a question about the ecp does ecp cover the cost of extending a pipeline to adjacent crp land that is eligible for grazing under the disaster dector designation and how about purchasing a water tank to deliver water to crp grazing um ecp does cover um water tanks to be placed out in the field like i said if their current water supply is no longer available uh there are some restrictions um under the 2018 farm bill when it comes to the pipeline and if you're talking about actually installation of a pipeline through crp there's also some restrictions with that so that would be one of those cases that we would have to look at on a case by case basis so your first stop would be working with your local county fsa office on that okay uh crp question uh will we be able to sign up crp uh sign up for crp haying prior to august 2nd uh it seems like it says every time i call grand forks county they say they're too busy certifying acres uh what about giving the required signatures take some time you know the owners need to be mailed mailed out and the owners are out of state yes um like i said earlier um under both the non-emergency and the emergency haying are uh it cannot start until august 1st but you can definitely um work with the county office to get make sure that you have all of your uh forms signed and all the paperwork in order so that you can start immediately with the emergency haying and grazing as of august 2nd uh just understanding that county offices are extremely busy and they are trying to work on their acreage reporting um so as long as you call them and make an appointment they should be able to handle your request uh yeah this is kind of related and at what date could we start signing up emergency haying um and i understand you can't be cut until august 1st you basically answer that i guess which counties are currently uh ineligible for emergency grazing right now it would be our seven counties that we have located in the southeast so those counties if we went back yep in the southeast so um there's seven of them right along the eastern border there it's shown on that map you had right yep it sure did okay so um i could listen for you here really quick they would be um let me just look at that one more time i can't find it so we're talking about our uh we're talking about richland lemor sergeant cass trail sorry i was just looking here so cass it looks like barns and steel okay on the question maybe but in another week's time yeah in another week's time it may change because then we're looking at going into the eighth week of a d2 in those counties so then we're down to only three counties that would not be eligible for emergency syrupy grazing and that would be just those lemor sergeant and richland richland right i think this was answered in the chat by ryan but right uh the about the interest rates um 2.875 okay um why are the payments reduced by 40 percent on the as students talk about the lfp when feed costs have been increasing by 50 percent our payment factors are um and are actually based off of the national feed cost and i don't have that information readily available yeah this is the way it is i guess uh will there be a possibility of any emergency hanging of any kind opening up on the wetland cp 2 3 c rp i'm not sure what that is but i'm sorry i just got a clarification lemor is d3 oh okay yeah so actually if you look at the map it's just a very corner ransom sergeant richland yep sorry about that i had the wrong county ransom sergeant and richland thank you for that clarification so one more time on the question i apologize oh no i would they're wondering about if there be the emergency hang on any of any kind opening up on wet land up on a wetland and then cp 23 c rp i'm not sure what that stands for but cp 23 is actually our wetland restoration practice and unfortunately with the 2018 farm bill um these are statutory um i did check on that just to see if we could maybe uh try and get some hopes to have wetland practices opened up for emergency hang but based on the 2000 language in the 2018 farm bill that's not going to happen however like i provided information about non-emergency uh hang that would allow for those wetland type practices to behave in a rotation so that would be something that you can check on to see where you're at in your rotation i guess uh okay here's one about uh income uh there are percentage restrictions based on the annual income coming directly from agriculture versus non-agriculture uh when you're talking about adjusted gross income uh we take a look at um there adjusted gross income of 900,000 is the limitation right uh then we have a question on the on the pandemic cover crop program what can you say tell say anything about that i cannot i apologize i don't i don't cover that program from what i understand it it was administered it's administered to crop insurance i think it's five dollars an acre but uh that's about all i know about it and it's i think the deadline is very close sorry i couldn't answer that any possibility of of hanging before august 1st i guess it depends on that on the USDA i suppose huh yeah i i did ask that question um whether or not we could request a waiver since the state of North Dakota is in such dire straits again um the probability of that is not likely based on the fact that um USDA has to be very careful um to work with our conservation groups to ensure that we are following the terms and the conditions of all the contracts and the purpose of what the CRP is for so when you're talking about the primary nesting season we have to ensure that we're not um defeating the purpose or defeating that cover in order to uh go out and hate so in order to even be able to um think about that kind of an idea an environmental assessment would have to be completed on the national level um and that cost is very expensive in order to get that done and then of course they would have to have buy in by all the conservation groups so um i'm not going to say it's impossible but i'm going to say that at this point um it looks highly unlikely so i think we pretty much covered these last two questions already so uh and i think Miranda we got everything covered that was that got got into the chat i have a couple yet um so you know you just said during when you're covering ECP um that the county has supply are there any counties in North Dakota that currently have active ECP enrollment? Yes um actually word county has been approved to implement ECP for drought um and they are they have not yet established their sign-up period but that will be announced shortly so i do know that there's other counties that are working with their county emergency boards and their local county committees in order to do an assessment of needs and so i do anticipate that we would have a few more requests that are coming but as of right now for drought only we do have um we do have word county okay and then in terms of ECP you said that the animals must be able to graze or be or be out grazing um obvious normally grazing there'd be an exclusion if obviously there's no water available any more that water stock for some reason but they would have the capacity to graze if that infrastructure is in place yep that would they would be eligible to apply for assistance on that situation and we've got a couple more popping into the Q&A um is this is there acreage limitation with emergency hay and grazing for emergency haying um there is no uh requirement 100 of the acreage could be hayed um under emergency grazing um they can hay all of the acreage at a 50 carrying capacity did i answer your question marietta i yeah i think so yeah um and then it says when does our does a renter when a renter lease when does a renter lease need to be signed to be eligible for LFP uh within 60 days okay yep they have to show that they have control and risk of those livestock within 60 calendar days of the beginning date of the qualified drought so if they were in a D3 status as of April 15th then they would have 60 months prior to that to have um showed control and risk on those livestock for the grazing lands and go yeah and then there's a question regarding cost share and whether that has to be repaid cost share for ecp i assume for yeah ecps only program that provided cost share well we have cost share with our crp program but under the emergency provisions and even our non-emergency provisions as long as you stay in compliance with the terms and conditions for which you're signing then um then there are no refunds that would be required um under the non-emergency there's a 25 percent payment reduction but you're not paying back cost share for that at all you're just paying a payment reduction and that payment reduction is waived if it's under emergency conditions now for ecp ecp again is a cost share program where we pay 75 percent um for the installation costs or 90 percent if you're one of the underserved um groups so again there would be no refund of cost share as long as you're in compliance with the terms and conditions of the of the program going back to the lease um contract it said what if they signed in may which would have been after the drought disaster declaration came out um i believe that if they um i'd have to look at that i i'm i apologize that would be one question that i'd have to look up for you i guess here's some clarification on the one question here about the pandemic cover crop uh it says here producers will automatically receive the benefit after filing their fsa acreage report by uh by june 15th um not run i i i guess i'm not sure laura do you have any insight on that yes it is and it's an rma program you were correct um producers do need to file an acreage report for their cover crop with fsa by june 15th but that is an rma program so if producers have questions on what is eligible and not eligible they need to be talking to their to their crop insurance agent here's one um maybe we missed if if you use emergency raising that does that affect your lfp payment no no okay question about the nap program i guess that they were wondering if that's going to be covered at some point i can take that run um with with this webinar we didn't include the nap program because that's a program where you have to purchase a nap policy to be eligible or not and we wanted this to be a broader audience um we have discussed that this fall we may um do a webinar strictly on the non-increasing program or nap program which covers crops that are not covered under crop insurance um so yes we are looking at doing something like that this coming fall so producers would be able to purchase a policy um for 2022 okay further questions oh oops sorry go ahead laura i was just going to add if the if producers who have a policy um have specific questions they can contact their local xs a office um further questions regarding clarification on pasture land that's leased um so if somebody owns the pasture but leased out can the farmers who are leasing the land apply for the lfp and who should be applying in the in those situations and it's the producer who has risk and control in the acreage so if i'm the owner and i'm leasing it to you maranda and you are um according to that lease liable to maintain that acreage then you would be the eligible producer of the of the grazing forage now with the livestock of course then you have to look at who's the grazing animals but it all falls back to the grazing lands how's that how that lease is written and who's got risk and control regarding water water availability dams are growing up fast which i know we've we've been seeing that everywhere um what's the best and fastest way to get water to those animals program wise we do have our lfp or i'm sorry our elap for water transportation um again you would have to file a notice of loss that you have a need for that because your current watering system is no longer available and then you could provide bills and receipts in order to show that you've been transporting water to those livestock um like i said under the ecp program it's a costier program but it does take a little bit of time in order to get the funding approved um because of the sign up period um so um you would incur your costs and then you submit all your bills and receipts and then we would reimburse at a 75 or 90 percent level so with that i think i'll wrap i'll wrap things up here thanks a lot to the fsa staff and wanda thanks for going on over all this stuff and um and we'll call it call it good for today um and you can always contact us with any questions and we uh we want to get the information out there so in this in this desperate desperate times we're in here in this drought situation so i want to let you know about all the resources that are available so so with that thanks a lot