Nebraska USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) is reminding producers of the availability of two programs announced by USDA earlier this year that wrap-up and fill remaining gaps in previous natural disaster and pandemic assistance. The Emergency Relief Program (ERP) Phase 2 and the 2020 Pandemic Assistance Revenue Program (PARP) are revenue-based assistance programs, and producers who are interested in applying will need to use information from their tax documents or other personal financial records as part of the application process.
The application period is open now through June 2, 2023.
“Producers have faced a host of crises in recent years,” said John Berge, Nebraska USDA Farm Service Agency state executive director. “ERP 2 and PARP are different from other FSA disaster programs. They focus on the revenue of the producer in order to fill in gaps previous assistance programs may have missed. It’s a holistic approach that will help provide producers with the support they need to continue feeding our communities.
“Unlike most FSA disaster program applications, those for ERP 2 and PARP rely heavily on a producer’s personal financial records,” Berge said. “It will require some effort on the producer’s part to generate the financial information necessary to determine program eligibility and complete the application or applications.”
Nebraska FSA is coordinating with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Agricultural Profitability for an educational webinar on these two programs. It is scheduled for 12:00 p.m. CT on Thursday, March 2. Registration for the webinar is free and can be found at cap.unl.edu/webinars. FSA officials also briefly will highlight other disaster assistance programs during this webinar, including those designed to address the ongoing drought.
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 1. However, producers who received ERP Phase 1 payments are not prohibited from applying for ERP Phase 2.
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 percent or greater decrease in allowable gross revenue for the 2020 calendar year, as compared to either 2018 or 2019, whichever year the producer selects to use as the baseline year. PARP will help address gaps in previous pandemic assistance, which was targeted at price loss or lack of market access, rather than overall revenue losses. When calculating gross revenue, this program will account for previous pandemic-related assistance payments made to producers, such as Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) 1 and 2 payments and Emergency Relief Program Phase 1 payments, among others.