The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will start issuing final pandemic assistance payments to timber harvesters and timber hauling businesses through the Pandemic Assistance for Timber Harvesters and Haulers (PATHH) program next week.
Overall, $200 million will be provided to loggers and log trucking businesses who experienced a gross revenue loss of at least 10% during the period of Jan. 1 through Dec. 1, 2020, compared to the period of Jan. 1 through Dec. 1, 2019.
“We know loggers and truckers felt the financial burden of the pandemic,” said Farm Service Agency (FSA) Administrator Zach Ducheneaux. “This included lack of access to wood processing mills, which caused major disruptions to the logging industry. We made initial payments as we enrolled customers in PATHH and are happy to now finalize payments to provide this much needed assistance.”
Eligible PATHH applicants must have derived at least 50 percent of total gross revenue from timber harvesting and/or timber hauling. Specifically, eligible activities included cutting timber, transporting timber and/or the processing of wood on-site on the forest land, such as chipping, grinding, converting to biochar or cutting to smaller lengths.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, authorized up to $200 million for PATHH. FSA issued initial payments up to $2,000 as applications were approved. Now that signup has ended and FSA has evaluated remaining funds, FSA has started to issue second payments to those applicants whose calculated payment amount was over $2,000.
Based on the number of actual PATHH applications filed, FSA will be required to lower the payment limitation for PATHH from $125,000 to $75,000 and apply a payment factor of 70.5% across all calculated payments to ensure program outlays do not exceed the available funding.
A full list of Pandemic Assistance is available at farmers.gov/pandemic-assistance.