USDA Designates Counties in Oklahoma as Primary Natural Disaster Areas

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has designated 67 counties in Oklahoma as primary natural disaster areas due to losses caused by the combined effects of drought, wildfires, excessive heat, excessive rain, flooding, tornadoes, lightning, high winds, hail, blizzards and freezes that occurred during the period of Jan. 1, 2011, and continues. 

Those counties are: Alfalfa, Atoka, Beaver, Beckham, Blaine, Bryan, Caddo, Canadian, Carter, Choctaw, Cimarron, Cleveland, Coal, Comanche, Cotton, Creek, Custer, Dewey, Ellis, Garfield, Garvin, Grady, Grant, Greer, Harmon, Harper, Haskell, Hughes, Jefferson, Johnston, Kay, Kingfisher, Kiowa, Latimer, Le Flore, Lincoln, Logan, Love, Major, Marshall, McClain, McCurtain, McIntosh, Murray, Muskogee, Noble, Okfuskee, Oklahoma, Okmulgee, Osage, Pawnee, Payne, Pittsburg, Pontotoc, Pottawatomie, Pushmataha, Roger Mills, Seminole, Sequoyah, Stephens, Texas, Tillman, Wagoner, Washita, Woods and Woodward.
Farmers and ranchers in Adair, Cherokee, Mayes, Rogers, Tulsa and Washington counties in Oklahoma also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.
Farmers and ranchers in the following counties in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.

• Crawford, Little River, Polk, Scott, Sebastian and Sevier in Arkansas.
• Baca in Colorado.
• Barber, Chautauqua, Clark, Comanche, Cowley, Harper, Meade, Morton, Seward and Sumner in Kansas
• Union in New Mexico.
• Bowie, Childress , Clay, Collingsworth, Cooke, Dallam, Fannin, Grayson, Hansford, Hardeman, Hemphill, Lamar, Lipscomb, Montague, Ochiltree, Red River, Sherman, Wheeler Wichita and Wilbarger in Texas.

In a separate announcement, USDA designated Adair and Cherokee counties in Oklahoma as primary natural disaster areas due to losses caused by the combined effects of blizzards, excessive rain, flooding, high winds and tornadoes that occurred during the period of Jan. 1, 2011, and continues. Farmers and ranchers in Delaware, Mayes, Muskogee, Sequoyah and Wagoner counties in Oklahoma also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.
All counties listed above were designated natural disaster areas July 27, 2011, making all qualified farm operators in the designated areas eligible for low interest emergency (EM) loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA will consider each loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity.
USDA also has made other programs available to assist farmers and ranchers, including the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE), which was approved as part of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008; the Emergency Conservation Program; Federal Crop Insurance; and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. Interested farmers may contact their local USDA Service Centers for further information on eligibility requirements and application procedures for these and other programs. Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov.

— Release by USDA.