Farms across the state, including in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, will be able to apply for federal financial assistance for damage they sustained during a spring freeze in mid-April.<\/p>\n
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Saturday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted New York a Secretarial Disaster Designation for numerous counties after the freeze led to significant crop loss for fruit operations.<\/p>\n
The state requested the designation in May<\/a>, following a freeze \u2014 which mostly impacted apple, stone fruit, grape and strawberry growers \u2014 from April 19-21 that saw temperatures dive into the low-to-mid 20s across the region after warm temperatures earlier in the month led to some crops budding ahead of schedule. The designation will allow farmers in 29 counties \u2014 and 41 contiguous counties across New York and neighboring states \u2014 to apply for USDA low-interest emergency loans.<\/p>\n \u201cNew York\u2019s growers experienced significant damage early this year with some losing an entire growing season and reporting tens of millions in economic loss,\u201d Hochul said in a release. \u201cI would like to thank the USDA for taking this action to declare a disaster designation for the impacted counties and help our growers get the assistance they need to recover and move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Hudson Valley counties covered by the designation include Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Sullivan, Rockland and Westchester. In the Capital Region area, coverage includes Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer, Fulton, Montgomery, Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties.<\/p>\n \u201cOur orchards and vineyards were hit particularly hard, with some farms losing as much as 90% of their crop,\u201d Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger said in a statement. \u201cThe Disaster Declaration will enable our farmers to access low-interest loans to help get them through the year, and will also provide temporary relief from payments on existing federal loans.\u201d<\/p>\n Her statement continued: \u201cWe all pushed very hard for this federal relief, which couldn\u2019t come soon enough for our family farms.\u201d<\/p>\n Twelve counties were granted a disaster designation for a freeze earlier in April, while 20 more were granted coverage for another freeze in mid-May. According to\u00a0Hochul\u2019s release, producers have lost an estimated more than $30 million to date and between 15% and 100% of crops.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw unprecedented damage to our apple crops and vineyards while touring the Hudson Valley, and growers in regions across the state are facing similar economic losses from the spring frost as well,\u201d state Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball said in the release. \u201cSecuring this disaster declaration will provide the opportunity for affected farmers to apply for critical loan funding that will be crucial to our growers as they move forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The designation grants impacted farmers eight months to apply for relief programs. Farmers can access their local Farm Service Agency office at farmers.gov<\/a> and other resources at agriculture.ny.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farms across the state, including in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, will be able to apply for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":961410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,111310,326856,364155,336129,425,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,290,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-961409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-catskills","tag-hvexp","tag-hvnews","tag-hvoutdoors","tag-local","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-state","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116989070517406053","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961409","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=961409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}