The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is pushing a variety of programs to help Alaska farmers and agriculture producers make ends meet financially, especially those living in rural areas like Kodiak Island.
Although Alaska doesn’t have counties like the Lower48 does, the Farm Service Agency divides its jurisdiction within the state into the southern and the northern counties.
Each of four total counties serve a large geographic area with the Palmer and Homer counties grouped together under the southern county, while Delta Junction and Fairbanks are included in the northern county.
Hazen Kazaks, the executive director of the southern county with the USDA-Farm Service Agency, was in town during Kodiak’s Rodeo and State Fair over the Labor Day weekend from Aug. 30 - Sept. 1 to promote the agency’s programs, like disaster relief or loans for Alaska farmers.
“Here in Alaska we have a reimbursement transportation cost payment program, just because, as everybody knows, transportation costs here in the 49th State and particularly in remote areas such as Kodiak Island, are higher than being in the contiguous U.S.,” Kazaks stated.
The program helps farmers, growers and producers across the state recuperate costs they spend on transporting or shipping goods into Alaska, such as animal feed or potting soil. Any producers who have used the Reimbursement Transportation Cost Payment Program (RTCP) in the past still have to reapply each year.
The annual RTCP is authorized by an Act of Congress and has been funded every year for the last decade, other than one year where it was skipped according to Kazaks.
Kazaks said there are roughly ten growers and farmers around Kodiak Island who participate in the program annually, which includes unique agriculture operations across the archipelago.
“And the program helps producers who are in the business of production, basically, of agricultural commodities such as aquaculture," he said. "So that might be mariculture for Kodiak Island producers, feed, fiber, and floriculture.”
The deadline to apply for the program is at the end of September.
Kazaks also notes that elections are coming up for the southern county committee, which weighs in on agriculture issues affecting an area from Bethel census area to the Aleutian Islands and Kodiak. Anyone who has worked with the Farm Service Agency, or Natural Resources Conservation Service in recent years and lives in Southwest Alaska, including on Kodiak Island, the southern half of the Kenai Peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands; is likely eligible to vote and should receive a ballot in the mail in November.
Rebecca Dawn of Kodiak Island, and Ina Jones of Homer are the two nominees running for the committee this year.
