{"id":408667,"date":"2025-11-27T16:12:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/408667\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T16:12:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:12:33","slug":"maine-drought-declared-disaster-by-usda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/408667\/","title":{"rendered":"Maine drought declared disaster by USDA"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared<\/a>\u00a0Maine\u2019s ongoing drought a natural disaster, allowing farmers to apply for federal emergency assistance loans from the agency.<\/p>\n

Farmers in all 16 counties are eligible for the USDA loans. Funds can be used to pay off debt, for essential living expenses, and to replace product or equipment.<\/p>\n

Much or all of the state has been gripped by drought for several months now, despite recent rainfall<\/a>. It started with a dry spell in August and has continued to worsen throughout the growing season. The drought has been severe enough to impact many farmers\u2019 bottom lines: blueberry<\/a>, apple, potato and maple syrup<\/a>\u00a0growers have all felt the effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw significant reduction in crop yield on almost all crops,\u201d said Tom Gordon, soil and water conservation program coordinator at the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. \u201cBerry crops were reduced to 50-75%, apple crops were smaller this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon said the federal loan program should help farmers to stabilize their income after a season of losses. But for some crops, he said, the damage will go past this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the problems with berries and fruits is they often need to set their buds this year for next year\u2019s fruiting,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the drought has definitely affected the ability of those plants to get themselves ready for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the federal loans, Maine\u2019s Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry will also take grant applications for the state drought relief program, Gordon said. That program will help to fund drilled wells and water storage ponds for farms in Maine.<\/p>\n

\u201cUSDA\u2019s Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Risk Management Agency offer a full suite of technical and financial assistance programs to help agricultural producers recover from natural disaster events, including drought,\u201d a USDA spokesperson told Maine Public in a statement.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Drought Monitor predicts the dry period will last through the winter. Depending on snowpack accumulation, melting snow in the spring may bring an end to the drought.<\/p>\n

This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared\u00a0Maine\u2019s ongoing drought a natural disaster, allowing farmers to apply for federal…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":408668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[6772,746,12833,159,16580,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-408667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-drought","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-farming","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-u-s-department-of-agriculture","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115622546205130494","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}