Justificaton Memo

United States Department of Agriculture

Farm and Foreign

Agricultural

Services

Farm Service Agency

1400 Independence Avenue, SW

Stop 0572

Washington, DC

20250-0572

June 17, 2009

TO: Drew Perraut

Desk Officer,

Office of Management and Budget

FROM: Steven J. Peterson /s/ Steven J. Peterson

Chief, Disaster Assistance Branch

SUBJECT: Emergency Approval Request on Temporary need for Producer Certification Statement for NAP CCC-583

We are requesting an emergency approval by 6/17/2009 for form CCC-583 that is needed to implement a temporary process for certifying that recipients of crop disaster assistance do not exceed benefit limits. This request is urgently needed so that we can begin making payments for crop disaster assistance. The new form shows producers their previously provided information and requires them to sign the new form to certify the information is correct; it does not require the producer to provide any additional information.

The 2008 Farm Bill requires us to attribute ownership interests in payments for our programs for the purposes of determining whether a person has met the limits for benefits in a different way than we have attributed such payments in the past. We don’t have the software completed to determine automatically if someone has exceed the payment limits based on the new requirements in the Farm Bill. Therefore, we are requesting an emergency approval for a form entitled “Statement of Compliance with Program Provisions of the 2009-Crop Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) and Waiver of Finality of Payment Provisions.” The form will be used to have producers manually certify that they are compliant with the payment limits and other provisions. The waiver part of the form specifies that if the automated payment software later finds that they exceeded the payment limits, a refund of the overpayment will be required.

The estimated burden for this temporary form is 5 minutes per producer, with an expected 5000 respondents. When the software is completed in August 2009, we will stop using this form.

If there are any questions or concerns, please call Deirdre Holder at 202-205-5851 or Mary Ann Ball at 202-720-4283.