NW Iowa News

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded O'Brien County emergency funds for the drought it has been facing since June. 

“O’Brien is a neighboring county to a county that was hit with a D3 drought, based on the U.S. drought monitor,” Amanda De Jong, state executive director at the USDA Farm Service Agency in Des Moines, told NWestIowa. “In the farm bill statute, it really outlines how the secretary makes these primary disaster designations and the drought monitor is one of those things that can trigger it. In this case, there was a D3 drought designation that hit a neighboring county, so that automatically triggers not only the eligibility for the counties that hit D3, but also the contiguous, or i.e., neighboring counties. That’s how O’Brien County got in.”

Funds from the USDA were awarded to help the area recover. 

“In O’Brien County, we have opened up our emergency loan program,” De Jong told NWestIowa. “Farmers can, if they are interested in an emergency loan, they can learn about that. We’ve got a website, farmers.gov. But basically, emergency loans, they’re really low-interest money or low-interest dollars that we can lend to producers to repair or replace buildings, machinery or livestock."

Farmers looking to get emergency loans can speak with a loan officer from the USDA Farm Service Agency in Orange City, De Jong said. The deadline for applications is May 10, 2021. 

“The first and foremost thing producers are going to see as a result of drought is typically yield loss,” De Jong told NWestIowa. “Another issue is going to be probably for some of the cattlemen will be forage quality. Forage quality can definitely be impacted by drought or lack or availability of forage due to the drought.”