USDA Update

By Rod Johnson

The Kiowa County USDA Service Center offices will be closed Monday, July 5^th for observance of Independence Day. The offices will reopen on Tuesday, July 6^th.

On June 24^th, the Secretary of Agriculture authorized Emergency Haying and Grazing for CRP acres in qualifying counties. The two methods of qualifications are as follows:

1. The State FSA committee may approve emergency haying and grazing on a county-by-county basis if the county is designated as "D3-Drought Extreme" or "D4-Exceptional" according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. None of the counties in Colorado are in the D3 or D4 drought level.

   The U.S. Drought Monitor is available online at: http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html.

2. The county must have suffered a 40-percent or greater loss of normal precipitation for the 4 most recent months plus the days in the current month before the date of request. This area does not qualify due to the higher than normal rains in April and now in June.

Managed Haying and Grazing of CRP is available from July 15 until October 13 for haying and November 12 for grazing. To take advantage of the managed haying and grazing options, producers must modify existing conservations plans with NRCS for the CRP acreage to include the haying and grazing practices. Producers must also agree to certain terms and conditions, including signing an agreement to re-establish, at the producer’s own cost, any cover destroyed or damaged as a result of haying or grazing. Annual rental payments will be reduced by 25 percent for the acreage that is hayed or grazed. Under the Managed Haying and Grazing provisions, producers can cut hay or graze livestock on a given acre no more than once every three years after the vegetative cover is fully established. Producers may not harvest hay and graze livestock on the same land in the same year.

USDA has a website for producers to list information concerning the need for hay or the availability of hay for sale. The address for USDA’s Hay Net Website is: http://www.fsa.usda.gov/haynet/

For 2003 and prior years the NAP grazing loss was calculated using the percent of loss, carrying capacity, and grazing days established for the administrative county regardless of where the land is physically located. Due to a change in procedure, beginning with the 2004 NAP year, grazing losses will now be calculated using the percent of loss, carrying capacity, and grazing days established where the land is physically located.