SDRP disaster payment farmers 2026 just got a major upgrade. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced on April 24 in Higginsville, Missouri that USDA is raising the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program payment factor from 35 percent to 70 percent. That means every eligible producer with an approved SDRP application will receive an additional payment equal to 35 percent of their calculated benefit. FSA has already distributed $6.7 billion in SDRP payments to date. The doubling of the payment factor means a second wave of checks is on the way to farmers who suffered crop, tree, bush, and vine losses from qualifying natural disasters in calendar years 2023 and 2024.
At the same time, USDA is extending the SDRP application deadline from the original April 30 cutoff to August 12, 2026, for both Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the program. The extension gives producers and FSA county offices more time to work through application issues and corrections that could affect payment calculations. Rollins said the goal is to ensure that no eligible producer is left out of a program designed to address losses that were completely outside their control.
SDRP disaster payment farmers 2026: what Stage 1 and Stage 2 cover
Stage 1 of SDRP covers producers who received a crop insurance indemnity or Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program payment for eligible crop losses from qualifying 2023 or 2024 natural disasters. Stage 2 is broader — it covers eligible crop, tree, bush, and vine losses that were not covered under Stage 1, including shallow losses below the insurance coverage threshold, uncovered losses, and quality losses. That makes Stage 2 particularly important for producers who had losses but did not receive insurance indemnities. Qualifying natural disasters include wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, excessive heat, tornadoes, winter storms, freeze events including polar vortex conditions, smoke exposure, excessive moisture, and qualifying drought. For drought losses, the county must have been rated D2 severe drought for at least eight consecutive weeks, or D3 extreme drought or worse.
Producers with losses on land in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Massachusetts are not eligible for SDRP payments because FSA is using block grants to cover those states. All other eligible producers can apply at their local FSA county office or manage their application at fsa.usda.gov/sdrp. For more context on the total federal agricultural support picture, Agroinformacion covered the House Agriculture Committee’s push for an additional $20 billion in emergency aid on top of existing disaster programs.
Total Trump administration farm support now at $39.1 billion across all programs
Rollins used the Higginsville announcement to outline the full scope of agricultural financial support provided since 2025. USDA has issued $6.7 billion in SDRP payments, $9.3 billion through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, and nearly $1.9 billion through the Emergency Livestock Relief Program — totaling over $17.9 billion in supplemental disaster assistance mandated by Congress. The Farmer Bridge Assistance program has provided over $10 billion in payments to date, with additional specialty crop payments still to come from the ASCF program, whose acreage reporting deadline was today, April 24. Through permanent programs, FSA has provided $2.0 billion in disaster assistance, $5.3 billion in commodity price support, $3.1 billion in safety net assistance, and $685 million through conservation programs. The combined total across all programs is $39.1 billion in economic support. The original announcement was published by the USDA Farm Service Agency on April 24, 2026.
Source - https://agroinformacion.com
