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Amid drought, U.S. opens up land for grazing, haying
The Obama administration opens up protected U.S. land to help farmers and encourages crop insurance companies to forgo charging interest for a month.
Tue, Jul 24 2012 at 7:27 AM
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LAND: The lands made available are classified as "abnormally dry" and do not include sensitive lands such as wetlands and rare habitats. (Photo: AFP)
The Obama administration opened up protected U.S. land to help farmers and ranchers hit by severe drought Monday, and encouraged crop insurance companies to forgo charging interest for a month.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the new measures for major conservation programs were aimed at helping "livestock producers as the most wide-spread drought in seven decades intensifies in the United States."
"Beginning today, USDA will open opportunities for haying and grazing on lands enrolled in conservation programs while providing additional financial and technical assistance to help landowners through this drought," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
"President (Barack) Obama and I are committed to getting help to producers as soon as possible and sustaining the success of America's rural communities through these difficult times," he said.
The measures add flexibility to three voluntary programs designed to protect the environment.
Additional acres in the Conservation Reserve Program will be made available to farmers and ranchers for haying or grazing, as the most widespread drought in seven decades has substantially reduced forage for livestock, the USDA said.
The lands made available are classified as "abnormally dry" and do not include sensitive lands such as wetlands and rare habitats.
Other areas opened up were in programs dealing with water conservation and wetlands reserves.
Under the Federal Crop Insurance Program, the USDA said it "will encourage crop insurance companies to voluntarily forego charging interest on unpaid crop insurance premiums for an extra 30 days, to November 1, 2012, for spring crops."
In turn for the help to struggling farmers and ranchers, the USDA said, it will not require the crop insurance companies to pay uncollected producer premiums until one month later.
It recently reduced the interest rate for emergency loans to 2.25 percent, from 3.75 percent.
Since the year began, disaster areas have been declared in 29 of the nation's 50 states, making farmers there eligible for low-interest federal loans, the USDA said.
Copyright 2012 AFP Global Edition
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Maybe after helping farmers through this tough year, the best solution would be to discourage raising livestock for meat altogether as it is very water intensive and gives us a very poor nutritional return for the input when compared to a vegetarian diet. Subsidizing this industry makes no sense when it uses scarce resources, contributes heavily to global warming and encourages an unhealthy diet which leads to disease.