Helps agricultural producers, their lenders, and other persons directly affected by the actions of USDA resolve disputes. Through mediation, a trained, impartial person (mediator) helps participants review their conflicts, identify options, and agree on solutions. Mediation is a valuable tool for settling disputes in many different USDA program areas. These include farm loans, farm and conservation programs, wetland determinations, rural water loan programs, grazing on national forest system lands, and pesticides usage.

A type of farm ownership loan made to eligible applicants to finance a portion of a real estate purchase.

Provides a voluntary program to agricultural producers to help them safeguard environmentally sensitive land. Producers enrolled in CRP plant long-term, resource-conserving covers to improve the quality of water, control soil erosion, and enhance wildlife habitat. In return, CCC provides participants rental payments and cost-share assistance. Contract duration is between 10 and 15 years.

Provides payments to eligible producers on farms enrolled for the 2002 through 2007 crop years. There are two types of DCP payments direct payments and counter-cyclical payments. Both are computed using the base acres and payment yields established for the farm. Base acres and payment yields are established for the following commodities: barley; corn; grain sorghum, including dual-purpose varieties that can be harvested as grain; oats; canola, crambe, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sesame and sunflower, including oil and non-oil varieties; peanuts, beginning in DCP; rice, excluding wild rice; soybeans; upland cotton; and wheat.

A loan made to eligible applicants to purchase, enlarge, or make capital improvements to family farms, or to promote soil and water conservation and protection. Maximum loan amount is $200,000. A percentage of direct farm ownership loan funds is targeted for beginning farmers and socially disadvantaged applicants.

A loan made to an eligible applicant to assist with the financial costs of operating a farm. Maximum loan amount is $200,000. A percentage of direct operating loan funds is targeted for beginning.

Provided loans to farmers and ranchers who were unable to obtain credit from their normal agricultural lender(s) due to national or area-wide economic stresses such as general tightening of agricultural credit or an unfavorable relationship between production costs and prices received for agricultural commodities.

Provides emergency funding for farmers and ranchers to rehabilitate farmland damaged by wind erosion, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters, and for carrying out emergency water conservation measures during periods of severe drought. The natural disaster must create new conservation problems, which, if not treated, would: impair or endanger the land; materially affect the productive capacity of the land; represent unusual damage which, except for wind erosion, is not the type likely to recur frequently in the same area; and be so costly to repair that Federal assistance is, or will be, required to return the land to productive agricultural use.

Loans are available to eligible applicants who have incurred substantial financial losses from a disaster. Maximum outstanding loan amount is $500,000.

USDA may make loans to producers to build or upgrade farm storage and handling facilities. Commodities covered under this storage program are rice, soybeans, dry peas, lentils, small chickpeas, peanuts, sunflower seeds, canola, rapeseed, safflower, flaxseed, mustard seed, and other oilseeds as CCC determines and announces. Corn, grain sorghum, oats, wheat, or barley harvested as whole grain or other than whole grain are also eligible

GRP is voluntary, and it offers landowners the opportunity to protect, restore, and enhance grasslands on their property. USDA's NRCS, FSA, and Forest Service are coordinating GRP implementation. The program will conserve vulnerable grasslands from conversion to cropland or other uses and conserve valuable grasslands by helping maintain viable ranching operations.

A loan made by another lender and guaranteed by FSA to eligible applicants to purchase, enlarge, or make capital improvements to family farms, or to promote soil and water conservation and protection. Maximum loan amount is $852,000 (for FY 2006). A percentage of guaranteed farm ownership loan funds is targeted for beginning farmers.

A loan made by another lender and guaranteed by FSA to an eligible applicant to assist with the financial costs of operating a farm. Maximum loan amount is $852,000 (for FY 2006). A percentage of guaranteed operating loan funds is targeted for beginning.

A loan available to Indian tribes for purchasing privately held lands within their respective reservations boundaries.

Provides financial assistance to eligible producers affected by drought, flood, hurricane, or other natural disasters. This federally funded program covers noninsurable crop losses and planting prevented by disasters. Producers who are landowners, tenants, or sharecroppers who share in the risk of producing an eligible crop are eligible. Eligible crops include commercial crops and other agricultural commodities produced for food (including livestock feed) or fiber for which the catastrophic level of crop insurance is unavailable. Also eligible for NAP coverage are controlled-environment crops (mushrooms and floriculture), specialty crops (honey and maple sap), and value loss crops (aquaculture, Christmas trees, ginseng, ornamental nursery, and turfgrass sod).

Provide producers interim financing at harvest time to meet cash flow needs without having to sell their commodities when market prices are typically at harvest-time lows. Allowing producers to store production at harvest facilitates more orderly marketing of commodities throughout the year. Marketing assistance loans for covered commodities are nonrecourse because the commodities are pledged as loan collateral and producers have the option of delivering the pledged collateral to CCC as full payment for the loan at maturity.

A producer who is eligible to obtain a loan, but who agrees to forgo the loan, may obtain an LDP. The LDP rate equals the amount by which the applicable loan rate where the commodity is stored exceeds the alternative loan repayment rate for the respective commodity.

Provides loans to processors of domestically-produced sugarcane and sugar beets for the construction or upgrading of storage and handling facilities for raw sugars and refined sugars. Loans may be made only for the purchase and installation of eligible storage facilities, permanently affixed handling equipment, or the remodeling of existing facilities.

Provides operating type loans to eligible rural youth applicants to finance a modest income-producing agricultural project. Maximum loan amount is $5,000.