Supplemental Disaster Relief Program Stage 2 Announced

By Andy Brown

Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation

USDA announced they’re opening the Stage 2 portion of the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP) a week from today, November, 24, 2025. This is the remaining piece of the total $16 Billion that Congress appropriated in December 2024 that we advocated so hard for. This program includes some key pieces that LFBF has led the way in fighting for including coverage of quality losses (for program crops, specialty crops, and forages), a milk loss program, and on-farm stored commodities. This is for qualifying disaster events in 2023 and 2024 only.

Obviously just being announced, we don’t know a great deal yet. However, USDA did provide a fact sheet and checklist. They announced county office staff would be receiving training this week and you should be able to begin scheduling appointments with your local service center for signup. At a high level, here are some key takeaways I took from the briefing they provided us:

• Losses will be paid at a 35% factor due to limited funds compared to overall estimated need. Once the program is closed, they’ll assess remaining funds.

• Payment limits are $250,000 if 75% of your AGI is derived from farming/$125,000 if below 75% AGI for commodity crops

• Payment limit for specialty crops/high value crops is $900,000 if 75% AGI is derived from farming

• Applications will likely be time consuming as USDA is going to go crop by crop to figure losses. Documentation will be required. See checklist for details.

• The enrollment period for Stage 2 opens Nov. 24, 2025, and both Stage 1 and Stage 2 will remain open until April 30, 2026.

We will continue to study these documents and troubleshoot certain commodity specific issues as they arise. I’d encourage you to be patient with FSA staff as they reopen after a record-long government shutdown and have this extra workload put on top of their backlog. But we are proud to see this finally come to fruition.