U.S. farm states high on list of disaster relief funding recipients

Crop insurance from the Department of Agriculture made up the lion’s share of federal disaster relief dollars in the United States in 2011 and 2012, a new report suggests.

The Center for American Progress published Wednesday a report that it describes as the “first-known comprehensive estimate” of U.S. government disaster relief spending by state.

“There were 25 severe storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires that each caused more than $1 billion in economic damages, with a total price tag of $188 billion,” according to the report. All figures are in U.S. currency.

“To help communities recover from these violent weather events, the federal government spent nearly $62 billion for disaster relief in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. These federal funds only cover a portion of recovery costs; private insurance and individuals harmed by the events also spent billions of dollars.”

Where the center could identify federal disaster relief spending by state, it broke it down by nine programs, with total expenditures in 2011 and 2012 of $48.979 billion. Of that, $28.239 billion was in the form of crop insurance from the Department of Agriculture, $8.8 billion was from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund and $3 billion was from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ programs.

The report also listed — by state — total federal disaster relief program spending and several other statistics, including the number of disaster designations, by either the U.S. president or the federal secretary of agriculture, in 2011-12.

To compiles those statistics, the center used publicly available budget information and reports published on agency websites for the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years. It also submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act but did not receive replies to all of its requests.

“The 10 states that received the most federal disaster relief are primarily farm states in the plains and the Midwest,” the center wrote. “These states suffered billions of dollars of crop losses due to prolonged drought in 2011 and 2012.”

The five states found to have received the highest amount of aid were Texas ($5.252 billion), Illinois ($4.167 billion), North Dakota ($3.428 billion), Iowa ($2.758 billion) and Kansas ($2.734 billion.) The other five states in the top 10 were South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana and Louisiana.

Texas was also the state with the highest number (56) of disaster designations by either the president or the secretary of agriculture in 2011-12. The second-highest (38) was Oklahoma, for which the center found $927 million in federal disaster relief expenditures in 2011-12.

The report recommends, among other things, that the U.S. “significantly reduce” greenhouse gas emissions, starting with carbon emissions from power plants. “The United States must also plan for the fiscal impact of more frequent or ferocious extreme weather events.”