Farmers In 10 Counties Eligible For Disaster Loans Federal Funds Intended To Help Offset Losses From Last Summer’s Rain, Wind, Hail
A hail storm ripped through Chelan County last July, leaving broken apple trees and a damaged harvest in its wake.
Now the federal government wants to help those farmers and others in 10 Washington counties by offering low-interest farm disaster loans.
Gov. Gary Locke announced Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would extend low-interest loans to family-size farms and ranches in Chelan, Douglas, Kittitas, Okanogan, King, Skagit, Snohomish, Island, San Juan and Whatcom counties. Applicants must prove they suffered significant property or crop losses in certain natural events that occurred last summer.
In Eastern Washington, July storms brought crop-damaging heavy rains, high winds and hail.
“The kinds of crops we’re talking about are apples and pears,” said Rob Harper, information officer for the state’s emergency management division. At that time Okanogan, Chelan, Kittitas and Douglas counties were affected.
A month earlier, the same counties suffered massive runoff from snow melt. “There were seed crops affected and soil conditions were such that it was hard to begin crops on a timely basis,” Harper said.
The USDA does not yet have estimates on losses due to these acts of nature, “but it was a fairly sizeable amount of damage for a number of producers,” Harper said.
For example, about half of the farmers located two to seven miles from Oroville in Okanogan County said the July storms damaged their farms, the state agent said.
Stuart Skidmore, who works for the Farm Service Agency, expects at least 10 farmers from Chelan County to seek loans to pay operating costs for the orchards. “We could have the potential for a significant number of applications,” he said.
Depending on the size and age of the farm, the loans could range from $50,000 to $80,000, he said. Loans of this type are rare in Washington since farmers have to prove they suffered a 30 percent loss because of the acts of nature.
Applicants for the federal loans will be able to borrow money at a discounted rate.
Last year, Washington had four natural disasters and state residents have gotten about $10 million in federal support, Harper said. “This is a pretty significant program and it involves quite a bit of dollars.”
, DataTimes