The SDRP program was announced in July of 2025 to provide disaster relief payments to producers who suffered revenue, quality or production losses to their crops due to qualifying disaster events in 2023 and 2024. This assistance is being delivered in two different stages:
- Stage 1 began on July 10, 2025. Prefilled applications were mailed out to producers that had a crop insurances loss and received indemnities for 2023 and 2024 claims.
- Stage 2 enrollment began on November 24, 2025. Stage 2 provides payments to producers for losses not indemnified through their crop insurance (shallow losses). Producer’s will need to contact their FSA office to get the prefilled application.
Like Stage 1, eligibility requirements are the same with some additions for quality loss adjustments and uninsured crops:
- Eligible losses must be the result of a natural disaster occurring in calendar years 2023 and/or 2024 including wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, excessive heat, tornadoes, winter storms, freeze (including a polar vortex), smoke exposure, excessive moisture, qualifying drought (counties that have had D2 -severe drought for eight consecutive weeks or D3 -extreme drought or higher at any point during the applicable calendar year). Since hail is not a qualifying loss, you could still qualify if you also received excess moisture along with the hail.
- The payment limitation for SDRP (Stage 1 & Stage 2 combined) for 2023 and 2024 is $125,000/yr. Producers may submit FSA 510 Request for Exception to the $125,000 Payment Limitation if their average adjusted gross farm income is at least 75% of the average adjusted gross income increasing the limitation to $900,000 for specialty crops and $250,000/yr for other crops.
- SDRP payment factors are based on a producer’s crop insurance policy:
- Future Insurance Coverage Requirements – All producers who receive SDRP Payments are required to purchase federal crop insurance or NAP for the next 2 available crop years at the 60% level of coverage or higher.
- Stage 2 also covers quality losses provided the producer has verifiable records to support the quality loss.
- Quality loss for crops will be calculated by using a decrease in value based on discounts provided at the point of sale due to the physical condition of the crop.
- Quality loss for forage crops will be based on a reduction in nutritional value. Documentation of the Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) or some other measure of forage feed quality must be provided to support the loss.
- Stage 2 will also cover crops that were uninsured or not covered by NAP by a 70% SDRP Factor. If a crop is uninsured, the SDRP liability is calculated using 100% of the county expected yield. Also, quality adjustments are available for these uninsured crops. If your uninsured crops are certified but not showing on the application, let your FSA office know.
- Application deadline for both Stage 1 and Stage 2 is April 30, 2026
- SDRP Payment calculation will be factored by 35%, the same as Stage 1.
If you didn’t have any quality issues in 2023 or 2024, you could contact FSA and complete your SDRP Stage 2 application now.
If you have crops with quality issues, you may want to wait to complete the application until we get more information from FSA. We will pass this information along as we receive it from them.