The National Cotton Council filed comments with U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding the agency’s rulemaking on implementation of the Emergency Relief Program for 2022.
Cotton growers across the belt experienced devastating weather events including droughts and hurricanes throughout the 2022 growing season. In light of these challenges, Congress and the Biden administration recognized the severe impact of these losses by allocating $3.74 billion in agricultural relief through the passage of the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022.
Unfortunately, USDA’s approach to implementing Track 1 of ERP 2022 penalizes producers who suffered the largest losses by using a progressive payment factor to calculate payments and limiting the eligibility of the producer-paid premium reimbursements.
Track 2 of ERP 2022 also continues the burdensome reliance on Schedule F tax documents to determine potential assistance, even though these documents often do not provide a full picture of crop revenue or losses for producers who use cash accounting methods.
NCC’s comments at www.cotton.org/issues/2024/upload/24erplet.pdf strongly urge USDA to reevaluate ERP 2022 and provide a more equitable and efficient approach to loss compensation.
