United States Department of Agriculture offers several programs geared towards agricultural producers in Montana. Jill Lorang, who works for the Cascade County Farm Service Agency, talked to KMON about one of those programs that has an upcoming deadline.

Although Jill works for Cascade County FSA, the deadlines are consistent across the state. Call your local county FSA office to confirm the deadlines for your area.

ERP Phase Two and PARP Programs

ERP Phase Two program applies to producers who experienced revenue losses from eligible natural disasters like drought in 2020 or 202121. PARP applies to producers who experienced revenue losses in calendar year 2020 due to the lack of market access due to COVID 19. These programs are very unique in their implementation and unique in the way that we're administrating them. Producers are not going to be used to the way that these work, they're revenue based, which is different than production based. The deadline to apply is June 2nd, and producers need to do their homework to obtain numbers needed to complete their applications. Most producers are using their tax returns to complete these applications. Because of the difficulty in the administration of these programs, there is a free webinar and we would encourage producers to sign up and register for the webinar.

Webinar

It's Monday May 1st and you're encouraged to sign up through farmers.gov. The webinar is hosted by USDA and the National Farm Income Tax Extension Committee, so it's a great resource for producers to use. There's also tools and calculators available on Farmers.gov

ELAP Feed Transportation

Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-raised Fish (ELAP)- Those producers that had to haul in feed due to the drought in 2022 need to have their hay and feed hauled by the beginning date of the grazing season to count. Most counties in the area, this is May 1st, however, Cascade County is May 15th. Please call the offices to ensure that your paperwork and receipts are filed. You have until March 1st, 2024 to file the application for payment. However, payment rates were announced last week and applications for payments are being processed. Just a reminder about new land purchases, leases or entity structured changes. Please contact your office as soon as you pick up a new lease or there's any land changes.

MAP packets

MAP packets are available for pickup in the offices, and July 15th is the deadline to certify your acres.

Loss of Livestock

With this spring snowstorm that we had last week, we would encourage you, if you did lose any livestock, to please call the office to file a notice loss within 30 days. Death loss has to be documented with pictures, date stamped and calving books, or you can pay for us to come out and do a measurement service and actually count those livestock.

Grassland CRP

Grassland CRP signup started last week and goes through May 26th. It's different than typical CRP in that it's a working land program. You can still graze or hay the land with stipulations. Additionally, producers may be eligible for up to 50% cost share for water developments or fencing. Please call the office as soon as possible for more information.

Farmers.Gov

I just encourage producers to go to Farmers.gov or call the office with any questions and we want to wish our producers a safe and productive spring worked and planting season.

USDA Careers

Keep your eye out on USDA Jobs and there's some great resources there, some great jobs that are posted and we'd encourage people to apply HERE.

Tune in every morning at 6:45 and 8:45 M-F for up to date Ag News from around the area. If you have any Ag Story that needs to be told, send me an email at randall.bogden@townsquaremedia.com