Kimball County Family Farmers Eligible To Apply For Loans

Farm Service Agency (FSA) Kimball County Office announced that family farmers in seven counties in Nebraska are eligible to apply for low interest Farm Service Agency (FSA) Emergency (EM) loans due to physical and production losses caused by drought that occurred on November 1, 2012 and continuing.

Those seven counties are: Kimball, Cheyenne, Chase, Deuel, Dundy, Keith and Perkins

These seven Nebraska counties became eligible for this assistance because they are contiguous to the 30 Colorado counties that were designated on January 9 by the Secretary of Agriculture.

Family farmers interested in finding out if they are eligible should contact either Robert J. Nagel or Roger Joekel for information. They can be reached Monday through Friday between 7:30 – 4:30 at the Kimball County FSA Office, 311 E. 2nd Street in Kimball or call (308) 235-2822.

Emergency loan applications are available and must be submitted through the local FSA county office from any applicant who qualifies for a physical or production loss (at least a 30 percent reduction from normal) in a single enterprise from this disaster in the counties.

To qualify for an EM loan, an applicant must be an established family farm operator; provide evidence of having suffered a qualifying physical or production loss; be unable to obtain suitable credit from a source other than FSA. The low interest loans may cover up to 100 percent of their actual production losses, up to a maximum amount of $500,000.

The applicants must show ability to repay the loan and the loan must be adequately secured.

FSA loans for production losses may be used to buy feed, seed, fertilizer, livestock, or to refinance certain debts. FSA loans for physical losses may be used to repair or replace the property that was damaged or lost. The January interest rate for EM loans is 2.25 percent.

The deadline for submitting applications is September 9, 2013.

In addition to the emergency (EM) Loan Program, FSA has other loan programs and disaster assistance programs which can be considered in assisting farmers to recover from their losses. Please contact your local FSA Service Center or access additional information about FSA Disaster Assistance and Farm Loan programs atwww.fsa.usda.gov/dafl.

While this announcement pertains to the availability of FSA programs, other federal agencies such as FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and SBA (Small Business Administration) may also have assistance available to the public.

Information is available from these two agencies at the following websites; http://www.fema.gov and http://www.sba.gov.