The U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency's Emergency Conservation Program provides emergency funding and technical assistance for farmers and ranchers to rehabilitate farmland damaged by natural disasters, such as the New Year's Eve flooding in Napa County.

Funding has been allocated for Napa County under the program. Sign-up continues through May 12.

County FSA committees determine land eligibility based on inspections of damage. For land to be eligible, the natural disaster must create new conservation problems that, if left untreated would:

* Impair or endanger land;

* Materially affect the land's productive capacity;

* Represent unusual damage which, except for wind erosion, is not the type likely to recur frequently in the same area;

* Be so costly to repair that federal assistance is, or will be, required to return the land to productive agriculture use.

Conservation problems existing prior to the applicable disaster are ineligible for ECP assistance.

To rehabilitate farmland, ECP participants may implement: removal of debris, land shaping and grading, fence restoration and creating conservation structures.

Contact the Napa-Solano Farm Service Agency at 944-0622, ext. 2, for more information./Register