in effect
This is a final rule from the USDA Farm Service Agency that establishes the details and payment calculations for several disaster relief programs funded by the American Relief Act, 2025. It implements Stage 2 of the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP), the On-Farm Stored Commodity Loss Program (OFSCLP), and the Milk Loss Program (MLP), while also adding quality-loss payment provisions to the previously announced SDRP Stage 1.
SDRP Stage 1 now includes an additional category of payments for crop quality losses — covering situations where a disaster reduced a crop’s grade or nutritional value even if yield losses were already compensated — with all Stage 1 quality loss payments capped at 35 percent of the calculated amount. SDRP Stage 2 is newly created to cover producers who had no crop insurance or NAP coverage, or whose insured losses were not severe enough to trigger a payout, with payment factors ranging from 70 percent (uninsured) up to 95 percent (highest coverage levels), also multiplied by a 35 percent final payment factor. OFSCLP and MLP are formally implemented to cover, respectively, uncompensated losses of harvested crops stored in on-farm structures and milk that dairy operations were forced to dump — both for disaster events in calendar years 2023 or 2024. The rule also extends application deadlines for the Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) for 2023 and 2024, including its Flood and Wildfire variant. Producers in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Massachusetts are excluded from SDRP crop loss payments because those states are receiving separate block grants intended to cover the same losses.
Agricultural producers — including crop farmers, dairy operations, and producers with harvested commodities stored on-farm — who suffered qualifying disaster losses from events such as wildfires, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, winter storms, or excessive heat during calendar years 2023 or 2024 are the primary group this rule affects. Producers who previously received no compensation because their losses were too shallow to trigger insurance, or because they carried no insurance at all, now have a new avenue for assistance under Stage 2.