Supplemental Agricultural Assistance Programs

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Commodity Credit Corporation</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 1416</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID: CCC-2024-0003]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0560-AI68</RIN> <SUBJECT>Supplemental Agricultural Assistance Programs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) and Farm Service Agency (FSA), Department of Agriculture (USDA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rule makes discretionary changes to simplify and streamline deadlines for the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program (ELAP), the Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP), and the Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP). It also makes changes to clarify ELAP provisions for assistance for transportation of livestock feed. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective</E> January 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For ELAP: Seth Cross; telephone: (402) 309-3338; email: <E T="03">seth.cross@usda.gov.</E> For LFP and LIP: Kelly Breinig; telephone: (202) 720-1603; email: <E T="03">kelly.breinig@usda.gov.</E> Individuals who require alternative means for communication should contact the USDA Target Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and text telephone (TTY)) or dial 711 for Telecommunications Relay service (both voice and text telephone users can initiate this call from any telephone). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> ELAP, LFP, and LIP use CCC funds to provide emergency relief to eligible producers (7 U.S.C. 9081). FSA administers ELAP, LFP and LIP on behalf of CCC. ELAP provides assistance to producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish to aid in the reduction of losses due to disease, adverse weather, or other conditions, such as blizzards and wildfires, as determined by the Secretary, that are not covered by LIP or LFP. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> LFP provides assistance to livestock producers who suffer eligible grazing losses on land physically located in a county experiencing a qualifying drought during the normal grazing period for the county or are prohibited by a Federal agency from grazing the normal permitted livestock on managed rangeland due to a qualifying fire. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> LIP provides assistance for livestock deaths in excess of normal mortality caused by adverse weather or by attacks by animals reintroduced into the wild by the Federal Government. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  More information on ELAP is available at <E T="03">https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/disaster-assistance-program/emergency-assist-for-livestock-honey-bees-fish/index.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  More information on LFP is available at <E T="03">https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/disaster-assistance-program/livestock-forage/index.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  More information about LIP is available at <E T="03">https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/disaster-assistance-program/livestock-indemnity/index.</E> </FTNT> This rule makes discretionary changes to simplify and streamline the deadlines for ELAP, LFP, and LIP. It also makes discretionary changes to the ELAP regulations for assistance for transportation of livestock feed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Deadlines for ELAP, LFP, and LIP</HD> This rule amends the regulations for ELAP, LFP, and LIP to have a single deadline across all three programs for filing a notice of loss (required for ELAP  ), an application for payment, and other required documentation. Previously, each of the three programs had multiple deadlines and time frames for submitting required forms and documentation, and those deadlines also varied among the three programs. These changes are intended to improve efficiencies for producers and FSA staff, provide clarity regarding program timelines, and give FSA staff sufficient time to deliver support to producers who have suffered eligible losses due to disaster events. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  See 7 CFR 1416.107(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  See 7 CFR 1416.305(b). </FTNT> This rule changes the deadlines in §§ 1416.107, 1416.202, and 1416.305 to specify that the deadline to file a notice of loss, an application for payment, and required documentation for each program is March 1 following the end of the applicable program year, which is based on the calendar year for the three programs. The deadline changes are effective beginning with the 2024 program year, which began on January 1, 2024. Producers who suffered eligible losses for the 2024 program year prior to the publication of this rule may submit documents or make changes to previously filed documents for these programs by the new deadline of March 1, 2025, even if the previous deadline had passed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">ELAP Assistance for Feed Transportation</HD> Under ELAP, in addition to the purposes described in 7 U.S.C. 9081(d)(1), the CCC funds are authorized to be used to reduce losses caused by feed or water shortages, disease, or other factors as determined by the Secretary, including inspections of cattle tick fever (7 U.S.C. 9081(d)(2)). Feed transportation was added as an eligible loss for ELAP in a final rule published on April 6, 2022 (87 FR 19783-19786), to provide assistance to livestock producers in areas suffering from eligible adverse weather, an eligible loss condition, or eligible drought, who incur additional hauling costs because they are forced to transport feed from unaffected areas. To be eligible for ELAP assistance for feed transportation, producers must have a loss resulting from the additional cost to transport livestock feed to eligible livestock for additional mileage above normal, due to eligible adverse weather, an eligible loss condition, or eligible drought. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Payments are calculated by multiplying a national payment rate by the national average price per mile to transport a truckload of livestock feed, multiplied by the actual number of additional miles the feed was transported by the producer in excess of 25 miles per truckload of livestock feed and for no more than 1,000 miles per truckload of feed during the program year. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> This rule makes several changes to the ELAP regulations to clarify the feed transportation eligibility and documentation requirements and ensure that ELAP assistance for feed transportation is provided only for eligible losses as authorized and described in the April 2022 final rule. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  See 7 CFR 1416.103(d)(6). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  See 7 CFR 1416.110(n). </FTNT> The first of those changes adds provisions to the ELAP regulations in § 1416.103(d)(6) to specify that an eligible loss from the additional cost to transport livestock feed is limited to the cost to transport feed to meet the feed needs for eligible livestock during the program year in which the eligible adverse weather, eligible loss condition, or eligible drought occurred. The provisions also clarify that the cost to transport livestock feed is not an eligible loss if the feed is purchased or obtained: • in excess of the amount needed for the program year in which the eligible adverse weather, eligible loss condition, or eligible drought occurred, which will be determined as described below in the changes to § 1416.110(q); • to sell to another producer; • for another producer's livestock; or • for ineligible livestock. This rule also amends provisions in § 1416.106(c)(5) regarding documentation to specify that a participant must provide verifiable or reliable records, as defined in § 1416.102, that show the additional livestock feed was only purchased or obtained to sustain eligible livestock during an eligible adverse weather or loss condition. The provisions also specify that handwritten receipts are not considered eligible documentation for feed transportation without accompanying truck logs or other documentation to verify the cost of transportation, and payments in cash must have a verifiable record to verify that the transaction was made between two parties. These changes allow FSA to confirm that losses claimed for feed transportation are eligible losses as described above. To prevent payments for ineligible feed transportation costs, this rule also adds provisions in § 1416.110(q) that limit the amount of an ELAP payment for feed transportation based on the expected feed need of a producer's eligible animals. First, FSA will convert the number of eligible livestock identified on the application to an animal unit basis, using the same methodology used for ELAP assistance for water transportation and grazing losses. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> As provided in 7 CFR 1416.110(i)(1), FSA determined that the corn need for an adult cow, which is equal to 1 animal unit, is 15.7 pounds per day. Forage or hay requirements for an adult beef cow are approximately 24 pounds of dry hay matter per day, or approximately 26 pounds of hay with 8 percent moisture. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> To allow for a reasonable variation in the amount of feed consumed by eligible livestock, FSA will multiply the number of animal units by 24 pounds of corn or corn equivalent (equal to 15.7 pounds multiplied by 150 percent, rounded up to the nearest pound) or 39 pounds of hay or forage (equal to 26 pounds of hay multiplied by 150 percent). FSA will multiply the result of that calculation by the number of calendar days in the time period from the beginning date of the eligible drought or other eligible loss condition until the end of the program year to determine the maximum amount of feed for which transportation assistance will be provided. Any loads hauled in excess of that amount during the program year are not eligible for assistance. <FTNT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━