The record single-year drought afflicting Texas farmers had destroyed crops, decimated yields, and caused prices to rise. The obvious question: How will the farmers survive?<\/p>\n
Enter USDA crop insurance<\/a>,\u00a0a lifeline during this year’s drought:<\/p>\n More than 41,000 distressed Texas farmers have received $1.65 billion so far from the national crop insurance program to help compensate for disastrous low yields and other damage caused by the state’s worst drought in\u00a0history.<\/p>\n Though experts say the amount covers only about a third of the agricultural losses across the state, it may help some\u00a0survive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The USDA covers up to 65 percent of farmers’ premiums for the insurance, and has paid out over $130 million to farmers in West Texas so far this year. A study by Texas A&M University estimates agricultural losses due to this year’s drought to be $5.2 billion.<\/p>\n For ranchers, there is less relief:<\/p>\n Much less federal relief money is available to ranchers who suffered drought-related\u00a0losses.<\/p>\n About $1.5 million from the Livestock Forage Program has been paid to ranchers who suffered livestock deaths related to the\u00a0drought.<\/p>\n But that’s unlikely to offset losses in the cattle business, Texas’ top agricultural\u00a0industry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0Sources<\/em>: USDA Risk Management Agency<\/a>; Houston Chronicle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The record single-year drought afflicting Texas farmers had destroyed crops, decimated yields, and caused prices to rise. The obvious question: How will the farmers survive? Enter USDA crop insurance,\u00a0a lifeline during this year’s drought: More than 41,000 distressed Texas farmers have received $1.65 billion so far from the national crop insurance program to help compensate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}