CNMI farmers and ranchers now can get help to send their products to off-island markets as well as with the cost of importing fertilizers, seeds, and other production inputs through the Reimbursement Transportation Cost Payment Program of the U.S Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the year, U.S. Congress reauthorized the program in the 2014 Farm Bill and the USDA\u2019s Farm Service Agency announced earlier this week that sign-ups begin on July 21, 2014.<\/p>\n
The RTCP will provide assistance to geographically disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. That means producers who are located in remote areas. <\/p>\n
The program reimburses producers for a portion of the transportation cost for transporting their agricultural commodities or inputs used to produce an agricultural commodity.<\/p>\n
According to Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council chair Ramon B. Camacho, they had applied for the program three years ago and he is encouraging farmers to apply again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will help subsidize the costs and total expense of farmers. It is a good program and incentive and also helps with the cost and I am encouraging all NMI farmers to apply to this program,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n
U.S Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan (Ind-MP) is also encouraging farmers to apply for the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI encourage farmers and ranchers to enroll in the program. Be sure to save all transportation-related receipts as evidence of your expenses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The program\u2019s eligible commodities include: aquaculture, feed, fiber, floriculture, food, horticulture (including trees), insects, and livestock.<\/p>\n
Those eligible have be \u201cgeographically disadvantaged farmer or rancher\u201d producing, marketing, and transporting an agricultural commodity in an approved area, provide proof of the amount of costs earned, average non-farm income that does not exceed $500,000, and be a citizen or a legal resident alien of the United States.<\/p>\n
Commercial fishermen are not eligible to receive the benefits of the RTCP program.<\/p>\n
For more information, contact Thomas Camacho, FSA county director, at (670) 236-0896 or email him at thomas.camacho@pb.usda.gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CNMI farmers and ranchers now can get help to send their products to off-island markets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[42,257,57],"class_list":["post-37066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-food","tag-nmi","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}