I’m concerned that people are not going to apply,” he said. “All they need to have is the number of animals, number of acres and their FSA number. They don’t have to prove a loss.”

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) recently received a $704,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to deliver targeted financial assistance to beef and sheep producers within Minnesota who have experienced severe drought on grazing lands.

The West Otter Tail County FSA works regularly with these producers.

“We don’t have the exact number,” Wass said. “We think it’s probably 150 producers in West Otter Tail County.”

Considering the thousands of impacted producers and relatively limited dollars, the MDA acknowledged in a recent press release that this assistance will “not significantly cover actual losses on the reported more than 200,000 beef cattle and 24,000 sheep in these drought counties.” The release also stated that, while MDA would have preferred to deliver this assistance to all types of species (dairy, bison, cervids), the USDA only allocated assistance based on the number of beef cattle and sheep in these impacted counties.

Source: The Daily Journal