Emergency Livestock Relief Programs

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Farm Service Agency</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 760</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID FSA-2025-0005]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0560-AI72</RIN> <SUBJECT>Emergency Livestock Relief Programs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Farm Service Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Farm Service Agency (FSA) is issuing this rule to implement the Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) 2023 and 2024 Flood and Wildfire (FW), which provides payments to eligible livestock producers for losses as a result of increased supplemental feed costs due to a qualifying flood or qualifying wildfire (excluding wildfires on federally managed land) in calendar years 2023 and 2024. This rule specifies the administrative provisions, eligibility requirements, and payment calculations for ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW. This rule also amends the regulation for ELRP 2023 and 2024, which provides assistance for qualifying drought and qualifying wildfire on federally managed land, to specify that it has a combined payment limitation with ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW and to provide program deadlines. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on September 15, 2025. The deadline to submit an application for ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW is October 31, 2025. The deadline to submit all required eligibility forms for ELRP 2023 and 2024 and ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW is November 2, 2026. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kathy Sayers; telephone: (202) 720-6870; email: <E T="03">Kathy.Sayers@usda.gov</E> . Individuals with disabilities who require alternative means for communication should contact the USDA Target Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and text telephone (TTY mode)) 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> Title I of the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025 (Division B of the American Relief Act, 2025; Public Law 118-158; referred to as “the Act” in this document) provides “$30,780,000,000, to remain available until expended, for necessary expenses related to losses of revenue, quality or production of crops (including milk, on-farm stored commodities, crops prevented from planting, and harvested adulterated wine grapes), trees, bushes, and vines, as a consequence of droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, excessive heat, tornadoes, winter storms, freeze, including a polar vortex, smoke exposure, and excessive moisture occurring in calendar years 2023 and 2024 under such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary of Agriculture . . .”. From that amount, the Act directs the Secretary of Agriculture to use up to $2 billion to provide assistance to livestock producers, as determined by the Secretary, for losses incurred during calendar years 2023 and 2024 due to drought, wildfires, or floods. On May 29, 2025, FSA announced ELRP 2023 and 2024, which provides approximately $1 billion in assistance to eligible livestock producers for losses due to qualifying drought and qualifying wildfire using producer data already on file with FSA through participation in the Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP) (90 FR 22614). Assistance for losses due to qualifying wildfires from ELRP 2023 and 2024 is limited to qualifying wildfires occurring on federally managed land. This rule announces ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW, which will use the approximate $940 million in funding remaining of the $2 billion authorized to assist eligible livestock producers who incurred losses as a result of increased supplemental feed costs due to a qualifying flood or qualifying wildfire in calendar years 2023 and 2024. ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW assistance for wildfires is available only on non-federally managed land, and this requirement is not applicable to qualifying floods. Severe floods and wildfires in 2023 and 2024 disrupted feed availability and worsened forage conditions in major livestock-producing regions, particularly impacting the dairy and beef cattle sectors. These events, on both public and private land, strained local feed markets, increased supplemental feed costs for livestock producers, and reduced livestock productivity including milk production and livestock weaning weights. In 2023 and 2024, just under 11.5 million acres were affected by wildfires in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Annual Wildfires Reports. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In March 2024, five wildfires were contained in the Texas Panhandle, the largest cattle-producing region in the world. These wildfires resulted in approximately 1.1 million scorched acres, hundreds of destroyed structures, hundreds of miles of ruined fencing, and more than 7,000 dead cattle. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> During July 2023 and continuing into 2024, heavy rains and flash floods swept across the nation, inundating large portions of the country, particularly in the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest. California was severely impacted by floods in 2023 due to atmospheric rivers, while Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused widespread flash flooding in the Southeast in 2024. These extreme weather events had widespread effects including: <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Monthly Wildfires Report for Annual 2023, available at <E T="03">https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/fire/202313,</E> and Monthly Wildfires Report for Annual 2024, available at <E T="03">https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/fire/202413</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  NOAA, Assessing the U.S. Climate in March 2024, available at <E T="03">https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-202403</E> . </FTNT> • Disruptions to infrastructure (roads being impassable or washed out) and to local feed supply chains, causing delays and increased transportation costs to deliver feed products to livestock producers; • Increased feed costs for livestock producers and difficulty in securing replacement feed due to reduced crop quality or outright crop failure; and • Degraded livestock performance (including reduced production and lower weaning weights), especially among dairy cattle, as a result of low-quality feed and feed ration inconsistencies. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See the ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). To obtain a copy of the ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW CBA, search by docket number FSA-2025-0005 using the search box on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> . </FTNT> Unlike losses due to drought and losses due to wildfire on federally managed land, which were covered under the LFP and the previous ELRP 2023 and 2024, the new ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW compensates eligible livestock producers for losses due to qualifying floods, and qualifying wildfires on non-federally managed lands, that LFP and other Federal programs do not cover. ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW will compensate eligible livestock producers for the equivalent of 60 percent of: • 1 month of the calculated monthly feed costs for the producer's eligible covered livestock inventories for a qualifying wildfire; and • 3 months of the calculated monthly feed costs for the producer's eligible covered livestock inventories for a qualifying flood. While both qualifying disaster events are significant, the 3-month time period used for calculating payments for a qualifying flood will address both short-term and long-term feed needs resulting from the impact a qualifying flood has to the agricultural landscape, including the likely delay associated with bringing the flood impacted land back into production for livestock forage or grazing needs. The 1-month time period used for calculating payments for a qualifying wildfire is intended to address immediate feed needs and short-term impacts to the affected acres impacted by the qualifying wildfire. While wildfire destroys existing cover present on the landscape, it does not typically require extensive rehabilitation to support the regeneration of grazing acres or forage production like that of flood affected acres. The monthly feed costs are calculated based on the kind, type, and weight class, if applicable, for the livestock at the time of the qualifying event using the same monthly feed cost calculation used for LFP. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> FSA's use of a standard monthly feed cost calculation, based on 1 month for qualifying wildfire or 3 months for qualifying flood, streamlines program delivery by minimizing the amount of information a producer must submit and reduces the burden on producers to produce records of supplemental feed costs during an application period that is months or years after the qualifying disaster events. This approach is similar to LFP, which provides assistance based on the occurrence and severity of drought as verified by the U.S. Drought Monitor. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Monthly feed costs are based on a feed grain equivalent that is calculated according to 7 CFR 1416.207, as specified in 7 U.S.C. 9081(c), which uses the higher of the national average corn price per bushel for the 12- or 24-month period immediately preceding March 1 of the calendar year. For 2023, the monthly value of forage resulted in an LFP payment rate of $58.12 for 2023 and $52.56 for 2024 per eligible one animal unit per month. See also Table 2. </FTNT> FSA cannot determine eligible producers and payment amounts using producer data that is already on file as a result of participation in other programs; therefore, livestock producers will be required to submit an application for ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW. Althou ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 98k characters. 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