Matthew J. Lohr, Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), has announced that assistance may be available for Virginia farmers who suffered physical damage or poultry/livestock loss due to severe weather in late April.

“I have spoken with farmers from different parts of Virginia who suffered significant losses because of the recent tornadoes and other severe weather events. I encourage farmers with such losses to contact their local Farm Service Agency (FSA) office about the availability of federal assistance programs.

“FSA has a variety of disaster assistance programs and each one offers different benefits. Farmers need to talk to the experts in these local offices to see which programs might benefit them.”

Contact information for Virginia FSA offices is available online here. Click on the map to select a region and then click on a city or county for local contacts.

Fact sheets on various assistance programs are available at http://www.fsa.usda.gov. Click on Newsroom, then Fact Sheets. Farmers may be particularly interested in the following programs:


• Emergency Farm Loan Program


• Livestock Indemnity Program


• Emergency Livestock Assistance

“As a lifelong farmer, I know first-hand how devastating events like this can be,” said Commissioner Lohr. “In times like these that are already tough, I want to help our farmers take advantage of every resource out there to make as quick a recovery as possible.”