As the unprecendented Midwest floods continue to play havoc with people’s lives and property, one of the hardest hit is the farm sector. With millions of acres of farmland under flood waters, farmers are facing billions of $ worth of crops losses. However, all is not lost for these farmers. Uncle Sam does offer a little bit of help. According to USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), the agency tasked with providing crop damage assistance, what was a one time farm disaster aid, has been made permanent in the latest farm bill. So how much aid is available?

Based on a complicated formula a farmer who lost 35% or more of his crop to natural disasters may expect approximately about 25% of the market value of the lost crops. While searching for the detailed farm aid data, the FortiusOne data-team came across this interesting data-set on the FSA website. Its a set of excel spreadsheets, that shows natural disasters by counties between 2005 and 2007, which would help farmers figure out whether they are eligibile for the crop damage assistance. The list of disasters includes drought, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, hail storm, winter storm, excess heat, excess moisture, lightning, insect infestation and (crop & plant) disease.

The only thing not mentioned, but is sure to be covered, is damage due to earthquake and volcanoes. Shown below are the 3d-maps of the results of geocoded natural disaster events by counties in the lower 48 state counties for 2007, 2006 and 2005. Colors indicates total number of natural disasters while the height indicates the count of types of disasters. Thus brighter shades of red mean more number of disasters.

Total and type count of natural disaster events by counties in 2007 Total and type count of natural disaster events by counties in 2006 Total and type count of natural disaster events by counties in 2005

You may download data/shapefiles for these maps from Finder! by clicking on the links below.

FSA,USDA, Lower 48 eligible counties for Federal Disaster Assistance, USA, 2007

FSA,USDA, Lower 48 eligible counties for Federal Disaster Assistance, USA, 2006

FSA,USDA, Lower 48 eligible counties for Federal Disaster Assistance, USA, 2005

After spatially combining the three year data, the FortiusOne data-team found just 10 counties out of 3,111 in the lower 48 states were lucky not to have any natural disasters listed for them. Well, this should be no surprise since many of these jurisdictions are urban areas and rural ones do not have much farming activity. The 10 jurisdictions are Miami-Dade, FL; Shoshone ID; Nantucket, MA; St. Genevieve, MO; Deer Lodge and Silver Bow, MT; Venango, PA; Manassas City and Manassas Park, Poquoson, VA.

Of these 10 jurisdictions, the last three in Virginia have no farms according to 1997 Farm data, Nantucket, MA has 14 farms with density of upto 1 farm/sq mile; Shoshone, MT has less than 1 farm per square mile for a total of 44 farms; Deer Lodge and Silver Bow of MT have 83 and 116 farms with a farm density of up to 1 farm per sq mile, ditto for Venango, PA with total of 351 farms and Miami-Dade with 1,576 farms; much of Miami-Dade is an urban county while Ste. Genevieve of MO has 631 farms with a density of between 1 to 2 farms.

There are 15 jurisdictions that have the dubious distinction of being declared disaster areas with 7 or more natural calamities visiting upon them for 2005, 2006 and 2007. Of these, 7 were in North Dakota (Adams, Bowman, Dickey, Emmons, McCintosh, Sioux); 4 in South Dakota (Brown, Harding, Marshal and Roberts); 2 in Kansas (Cherokee and Greeley), one each in Colorado (Prowers) and Montana (Fallon). Spatilly North and South Dakota jurisdictions lie along the border between the two states, while Greeley (KS) and Prowers (CO) are next to each other. South and North Dakota counties are nearly evenly distributed around 46 N parallel and 100 W meridian. Majority of these had both droughts and excessive moisture. The map below shows the spatial distribution of the so called “lucky” and “unlucky” jurisdictions.

Popularity: 17% [?]