States are impacted by the ongoing wildfires
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
The governors of Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma penned a letter to acting USDA Secretary of Agriculture Mike Young, asking the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) for a temporary suspension of grazing restrictions in the Conservation Reserve Program.
The Conservation Reserve Program is a voluntary program. FSA pays a yearly rent and in exchange farmers remove environmentally-sensitive land from production.
Since wildfires started last week, more than 1.5 million acres have burned, leaving some ranchers struggling to feed their cattle.
“Livestock producers in our states are experiencing grazing land shortages due to ongoing wildfires…,” the letter reads. “Emergency grazing authorization would provide immediate relief to livestock producers in areas affected by the ongoing wildfires.”
The letter, signed by Governors Greg Abbott (Texas), Sam Brownback (Kansas), Susana Martinez (New Mexico) and Mary Fallin (Oklahoma), also asks for the expedited implantation of the Emergency Conservation Program.
“These fires have also devastated critical infrastructure, including fencing, on farms and ranches in our states,” the letter says. The Emergency Conservation Program provides critical financial resources to affected farmers and ranchers to rebuild fences.
“The sooner the program is implemented, the faster the livestock industries in our states can begin to rebuild from this devastating event.”
In the aftermath of the fires, the ag community has come together to help those in need.
In Oklahoma, Earl Livingston and Livingston Machinery collected more than 500 bales of hay and delivered them to ranchers in need.
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“There’s a lot of good people in this world. Several people in several counties are calling and offering hay,” he told News9. “(The fires are) a catastrophic thing to happen in your life so these people need all the help we can give them.”
Tallian Thompson, a farmer from Midland County, Texas, is donating $30,000 of hay and auctioning a deer hunt in Stonewall County. All the proceeds from the auction will go towards helping families.
“I’d give them everything I got if I could but you just do what you can,” he told News West 9.
Many farm organizations in the impacted states have also set up ways to contribute financial, hay and other donations.