The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has designated 55 counties in California and five counties in Arizona as primary natural disaster areas due to damages and losses caused by a recent drought.

Those counties in California are:

Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Lake, Los Angeles, Madera, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer, Plumas, Riverside, Sacramento, San Benito, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne, Ventura, Yolo and Yuba.

Farmers and ranchers in Del Norte, Imperial and San Francisco counties in California also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.

Farmers and ranchers in the following counties and city in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous the affected areas.

Those counties are:

Arizona — La Paz and Mohave

Nevada — Carson City, Clark, Douglas, Esmeralda, Lyon, Mineral, Ney and Washoe.

Oregon — Jackson, Josephine, Klamath and Lake.

In Arizona, USDA has designated Apache, Cochise, Gila, Graham and Pinal counties in Arizona as primary natural disaster areas. Farmers and ranchers in Coconino, Greenlee, Maricopa, Navajo, Pima, Santa Cruz and Yavapai counties in Arizona also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous to the affected areas.

Farmers and ranchers in the following counties in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous. Those counties are:

Colorado —
Montezuma

New Mexico
—Catron, Cibola, Hidalgo, McKinley and San Juan

Utah
— San Juan

All counties listed above were designated natural disaster areas on Feb. 4, 2015, making all qualified farm operators in the designated areas eligible for low interest emergency (EM) loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency, provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA will consider each loan application on its own merit, taking into account the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity.

Additional programs available to assist farmers and ranchers include the Emergency Conservation Program, The Livestock Forage Disaster Program, the Livestock Indemnity Program, the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program, and the Tree Assistance Program. Interested farmers may contact their local USDA Service Centers for further information on eligibility requirements and application procedures for these and other programs. Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov.

FSA news releases are available on FSA’s website at www.fsa.usda.gov via the “Newsroom” link.