Law that provided assistance to farmers who lost crops because of natural disasters in 1986.
The Farm Disaster Assistance Act of 1987 expanded the number of farmers who were eligible to receive disaster relief assistance. This measure was the first legislation that Congressional opponents to the administration of President Ronald Reagan and the 1985 Farm Bill could use to boost farmers’ incomes. The Democratic leadership opposed the president’s plan to cut back and restructure basic price and income supports for agriculture.
The Farm Disaster Assistance Act provided a one-time disaster payment of payment-in-kind (PIK) certificates, redeemed from government-owned grain, to farms in counties designated as disaster areas. Farmers could get up to $100,000 in a PIK certificate to cover any losses that exceeded 50 percent of their 1986 harvest. Those who farmed federally subsidized crops such as wheat, cotton, rice, and feed grains could apply, as well as those raising “nonpro-gram” specialty crops. Farmers only had to prove that “drought, excessive heat, flood, hail, or excessive moisture” afflicted their crops.
Two hundred thousand farmers in 38 states applied for the $400 million in benefits, most of them residents of the drought-ridden Southeast or flooded areas in the Midwest. The amount they applied for exceeded $500 million, and Oklahoma winter wheat farmers had not originally been part of the program, so Congress agreed to provide an additional $135 million to cover the shortfalls. It also gave PIK certificates to those unable to plant their winter crops. Although many in Congress tried to help farmers hurt by the farm crisis of 1982 (a period of depressed agricultural prices and overproduction), most such farmers had given up farming by 1987. The Reagan administration and Democratic members of Congress both understood that the Farm Disaster Assistance Act only signaled the first step in reversing the administration’s “decoupling” plan to reduce farmers’ reliance on the federal government.
