Farmers are now able to get some assistance for losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided businesses with loans to keep them running during all the restrictions and other impacts from the pandemic; if businesses meet certain requirements for making payroll, the loans are forgivable.

Small businesses benefited from the PPP, but farm operations weren’t eligible; for the past three decades, the SBA has been prohibited by law from providing disaster assistance to agricultural businesses.

“As it was explained to me once, if you can water it or feed it, it’s not eligible for the SBA,” said Bruce Morse, regional director for the Wyoming Small Business Development Center Network.

Morse said typically programs to help farms came through the USDA.

However, President Donald Trump recently signed legislation that permits funding through the SBA to assist farmers and ranchers whose businesses have been impacted by COVID-19.

Additional funding has been made available to farmers and ranchers through the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.

The SBA’s EIDL portal reopened Monday to begin accepting applications. Like the PPP, the EIDL program is available on a first-come, first-served basis; the first round of PPP funding was exhausted in less than two weeks, though the program reopened after Congress approved more funding.

Morse said his office can assist farmers who want to apply for the EIDL program, and he said the process is fairly straightforward.

“These low-interest, long-term loans will help keep agricultural businesses viable while bringing stability to the nation’s vitally important food supply chains,” SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza said in a statement.

Eligible agricultural businesses include businesses with fewer than 500 employees engaged in the legal production of food and fiber, ranching and raising of livestock, aquaculture and all other farming and agricultural related industries.

For more information, visit www.sba.gov/Disaster, or call Morse at 307-754-2139.

(Kevin Killough contributed reporting.)