The USDA has designated Belknap, Grafton, Merrimack, Strafford, Cheshire, Hillsborough Rockingham and Sullivan counties as primary natural disaster areas due to crop loss from unseasonably warm temperatures followed by freezing early this year. Now, farmers in those and contiguous counties are eligible to apply for low interest emergency loans from USDA’s lending agency.
Three counties in Southeast New Hampshire have also recently been designated as in an extreme drought, which qualifies farmers there for drought-related emergency assistance, too.
Brandon Kernon with the state’s Department of Environmental Services says this drought, he says, is the worst NH has seen in 30 years.
