| WILLMAR - Area sugar beet growers who suffered a severe crop loss from a
hard frost in October 2000 will receive $12.5 million in relief from the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2nd District Rep. Mark Kennedy announced
Friday.
Members of Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative of Renville and
USDA settled on the amount after seven months of negotiations. The money
will be paid by USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation, said Kennedy.
But the payment will not cover the entire $65 million loss from last
year's damaged crop, and it does not settle the co-op's lawsuit against
more than a dozen insurance companies to try to get them to cover last
year's losses.
Sugar co-op board chairman Neil Rudeen of Bird Island said the
settlement is good news.
"We've been working on this since April. It'll definitely help,''
he said Friday afternoon. "It's still not enough. The losses are
still greater, and we need to settle the lawsuit. We need the insurance
companies to pay.''
The settlement was reduced from $13.6 million because USDA says no
entity can receive more than $80,000 in a year, including all disaster
programs. "So if you had collected disaster on another crop earlier
in the year, that would come out of that $80,000,'' said Rudeen.
He said most growers will not receive that amount, however. "It
takes a pretty good-sized grower or one that had a lot of disaster earlier
in the year,'' he said.
"This is really the first dollars that we've seen,'' Rudeen said.
The settlement is in addition to $5 million in sugar that CCC will
award to the cooperative. Kennedy said he was able to get the sugar award
included in the 2002 Agriculture Appropriations Act, which was signed by
President Bush on Wednesday.
"This has been a long difficult year for sugar beet farmers in
southwest Minnesota,'' said Kennedy. "The sugar beet farmers suffered
a severe crop loss in a freeze last October. As we continue to seek
resolution of crop insurance coverage, I am pleased to be able to deliver
assistance at this critical time.'' |