News Releases for August 2002
August 20, 2002
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Hoeven Presses USDA To Expand Disaster Assistance
BISMARCK, N.D. - Governor John Hoeven today said he is pressing both the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Bush Administration for additional aid to ranchers and farmers in the grips of this summer’s extremes of drought and flooding in North Dakota.
“We worked hard to get a new farm bill, which puts farmers on a more solid footing and will better enable them to plan for their futures,” Hoeven said. “Today, however, we find ourselves facing another crisis in farm country - drought in the southern part of the state and flooding in the northwest. For the farm bill to truly realize its objective, we need to help farmers over this seasonal hurdle.”
Hoeven has contacted USDA Secretary Ann Veneman and spoke yesterday with senior USDA officials to push for an expansion of the agency’s livestock assistance program, which last week awarded $150 million to ranchers in four drought-stricken states: Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming.
Under the program, supplemental feed assistance is going to states in which at least 75 percent of pasture and range crop is rated as poor or very poor. That method of assessment excludes states like North Dakota with severely affected counties on the edge of the drought area. Hoeven pressed Moore to consider making the assistance available on a county-by-county rather than a statewide basis. The agency can fund expansion of the program by generating additional funds from existing USDA programs, Hoeven said. The Governor said he expects a response by the USDA within a few days.
In a related move, Hoeven this morning spoke with Chuck Conner, special agriculture advisor to President Bush, to press the Administration to fund a congressional disaster assistance bill this year to assist farmers and ranchers in both areas of drought and areas of flooding.
If the money must come from the existing funds allocated to the farm program, Hoeven told Conner that it should come from savings generated by lower spending on counter-cyclical and loan deficiency payments, and not by lowering the support levels offered in other farm bill provisions.
“Now that the season is advancing, it is clear that federal assistance is required to prevent terrible hardship for our farmers and ranchers,” Hoeven said. “The state is doing all it can, but the real solution to solving a disaster of this scope and magnitude is a federal disaster assistance package.”
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