Question 1

Who is eligible?

Accepted Answer

Eligible Crops

Crops that can be covered by federal crop insurance or the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) are generally considered eligible for QLA, excluding the below crops deemed ineligible.

To be eligible for the program, a crop must have:

suffered a quality loss due to a qualifying disaster event and
had a five-percent-or-greater quality discount due to the qualifying disaster event.

Eligible crops may have been sold, fed on-farm to livestock, or may be in storage at the time of application.

Ineligible Crops

Crops that were destroyed before harvest are not eligible for QLA.

The following crops are also ineligible:

grazed crops,
honey,
maple sap,
aquaculture,
floriculture,
mushrooms, ginseng root,
ornamental nursery,
sea grass and sea oats,
Christmas trees, and
turfgrass sod.

Eligible producers include individuals or legal entities who are:

entitled to an ownership share and
at-risk in the agricultural production and marketing of crops on the farm.

To be eligible for payments, a person or legal entity must either:

have an average adjusted gross income (AGI) of less than $900,000 for tax years 2018 and 2019 or
derive at least 75 percent of their AGI from farming, ranching, or forestry-related activities.

Persons and legal entities also must:

have control of the crop acreage on which the commodity was grown at the time of the disaster;
comply with the provisions of the “Highly Erodible Land and Wetland Conservation” regulations, often called the conservation compliance provisions;
not have a controlled substance violation; and
be a citizen of the United States or a resident alien. All entities consisting of more than one person must solely include United States citizens or resident aliens.

Assistance through QLA is available for eligible crops that suffered quality loss due to one or more of the following disaster events. The disaster event must have occurred in calendar year 2018 or 2019.

Tornado
Typhoon
Volcanic activity
Snowstorm
Wildfire
Hurricane
Flood
Excessive moisture
Qualifying drought

For drought, producers are considered eligible if the loss occurred in an area within a county rated by the U.S. Drought Monitor as having a D3 (extreme drought) or higher intensity level during 2018 or 2019.

Generally, the crop quality loss must have occurred in a county that received a qualifying Presidential Emergency Disaster Declaration **or **Secretarial Disaster Designation because of one or more of these qualifying disaster events or a condition caused by these events.

Producers in counties that did not receive a qualifying disaster declaration or designation may still apply for QLA with supporting documentation showing that the crop quality loss was directly affected by a qualifying event. For example, supporting documentation might include weather data from a reputable source.

Question 2

When do applications close?

Accepted Answer

April 9, 2021

Question 3

When do applications open?

Accepted Answer

January 6, 2021

Quality Loss Adjustment Program (QLA)

Eligibility

Terms

Application Instructions

Forms

Resources

Details