A July 18 article incorrectly said that Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) did not return telephone calls seeking comment on a federal farm program. Cochran's office returned a call early in the preparation of the article but did not return a subsequent one before publication.
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No Drought Required For Federal Drought Aid
As a result of the changes, 765 counties that had no droughts in 2001 or 2002 qualified for cash in 2003. In some cases, entire states -- including Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, West Virginia and Wisconsin -- were now included.
Hunting for Disasters
With the rules relaxed by Congress, federal agriculture officials pushed their local offices to find disasters that would make more livestock owners eligible, records and interviews show. It didn't matter if it was a cold snap or a storm that was two years old.
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The Agriculture Department inspector general's office eventually audited the program, saying the payments should have gone only to those with legitimate losses. But that was long after the looser rules led the USDA to hand out an additional $234 million in 2003.
No state did better than Texas. In the end, all 254 of its counties qualified. Ranchers in counties without droughts collected $45 million in 2003, on top of the $67 million that had flowed to the state in 2002.
In northern Texas, Cooke County ranchers qualified for $906,000 in 2003 on the basis of an ice storm that hit the area more than two years earlier. Tim Gilbert, former head of the USDA county office, recalled that "there was no damage in Cooke County to the crops or livestock. Maybe a few pine trees got knocked down."
Nonetheless, the county had been included in a presidential disaster declaration because of the storm. "The state office called and said, 'Yeah, you are eligible,' " Gilbert said. "I said, 'How can I be eligible for a storm in December two years ago?' "
Over in Denton County, northwest of Dallas, ranchers weren't hurting from a drought in 2002. Nor were they pressuring county USDA official Blake English for the livestock money. "There has not been anything like an uproar, because most everyone agrees that there was not a disaster in Denton County," English wrote in the minutes of a December 2002 meeting of a local farm advisory committee.
Still, in 2003, English said, he got word from his state bosses to go back and look again for a disaster -- any disaster -- under which local ranchers could qualify.
"I don't deny it," English said. "We got the message, a message to take another look. It came from our state office, probably through the district director." English said it was "pretty clear that we wanted the entire state of Texas to be eligible."
John Fuston, the Texas USDA director, confirmed that the county offices were urged to look for weather events and disasters that could qualify ranchers for the program. He said the agency was following the rules set by Congress.
Without any real disasters in Denton County, though, English was left to scramble. "We didn't have a drought," he said. "In fact, we were wet. The crops were above normal at the time."
English said he did his best, preparing a report on a rainstorm that had blown through more than a year earlier. "We knew it wasn't a disaster," he said. "We knew it wouldn't be approved." And, according to English, it wasn't.
