How Texas STAR fund helps farmers, ranchers impacted by Hurricane Beryl
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday morning on the Texas coast. Among those impacted were agricultural farmers as well as ranchers.
The Texas Department of Agriculture said the STAR fund was created to help fund disaster recovery efforts such as hurricanes. The STAR fund is able to help assist farmers, ranchers, and agribusiness owners in rebuilding fences, restoring operations, and paying for other agricultural disaster relief.
The Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller spoke with KXAN's Jala Washington on details about the STAR fund and how it can help farmers and ranchers impacted by Hurricane Beryl.
Jala Washington: What are you hearing about this community that is really most impacted right now?
Sid Miller: Well we got a lot of flooding and a lot of downed trees. We're part of the Office of Emergency Management. We've got personnel over to get the pine trees off the railroad tracks so the chicken feed can be delivered and other goods. We don't have a count on the livestock yet, I'm sure we'll have some. We may be setting up shelters, not people shelters, but animal shelters for displaced animals. We're part of the Emergency Management Service and we're doing our part. We've been preparing for about five or six days for this event.
Jala Washington: How exactly does the STAR fund work?
Sid Miller: STAR Fund is the acronym for State of Texas Agriculture Relief Fund. It's not taxpayer dollars, we raise the money from individuals, corporations, non-profits. We started early this year, we had the big panhandle fires. We're still working through that we had the flooding in South Texas, East Texas. We had tornadoes over Memorial Day weekend, you and Jim will remember that, now we've got Hurricane Beryl. So people donate money, we get it back 100% of it, there are no admin fees. It goes back to pay for things insurance doesn't pay, you know crop insurance or property insurance doesn't cover. Mainly, we help bury dead animals we will pay for that. We will pay for trucking and feed, things like that. T-posts and wires that have been destroyed and have to be replaced and any items like that, that is not covered under any other program.
Jala Washington: That's incredible, strictly donations no taxpayer dollars.
Sid Miller: We've raised a little over a million and three hundred thousand dollars from the first of the year. Our largest single donation was from HEB grocery store, they gave us half a million dollars to help out these farmers and ranchers.
Jala Washington: So with this fund, talk specifically what you've guys have been able to help put that money towards to help people out.
Sid Miller: Well the Panhandle fires we coordinated to help pay for trucking for 30,000 round bales of hay to get to the Panhandle. We pay for t-posts and wire. We lost 400 structures houses and barns in the Panhandle, so we help replace those that didn't have insurance.
Jala Washington: What do they need to do to access this fund?
Sid Miller: It's not just ranchers and farmers. I have recently included volunteer fire departments because they were really cash depleted after all these catastrophes we've had across the state. So we want to help those volunteer fire departments too. They can go to our website texasagriculture.gov click on the star fund in the column under grants.