FERRIDAY, La. – In the next two to three days, Concordia Parish farmers should receive a total of $4.55 million in federal payments to help make up for crop prices that are still too low for many farmers to make ends meet.

Personnel of the U.S. Farm Service Agency’s Ferriday office estimate that they have mailed checks to 700 to 800 farmers and landowners in Concordia Parish.

The payments are part of a $8.7 billion farm aid package President Clinton signed last week.

Included was $5.5 billion in market loss assistance payments.

Concordia Parish farmers and landowners have already received this year’s loss assistance payments.

This week’s checks, which Ferriday’s FSA office mailed Wednesday, will give them the same amount they got earlier this year.

In supporting farmers, these payments really boost the area’s whole economy, said Kevin Case, director of the FSA office.

&uot;We’re a farming community,&uot;&160;Case said. &uot;If farming does well, other businesses do well; if they don’t, we all suffer.&uot;

Prices for cotton stood at 53.43 cents per pound Wednesday, while soybeans were $5.09 per bushel. Rice was $5.80 per hundredweight, and corn was $2.355 per bushel.

The aid package also included $1.2 billion in crop loss assistance payments to help farmers with low production and low-quality crops and $476 million for oil seed producers, including soybean farmers.

Case said his office has still not gotten specifics on those programs – that could take several days – so he does not yet know when farmers can begin qualifying for those programs.