VIDALIA — Some in the Concordia Parish farming community have been saying it for months, but now the U.S. Department of Agriculture agrees — it’s a disaster.

The disaster in question was heavy rain followed by no rain followed by heavy rain, and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack declared 53 parishes in Louisiana — Concordia, Catahoula and Tensas among them — as primary disaster areas Monday.

“It rained nearly every day for six or seven weeks, but in June and July it just got dry,” Concordia Parish Extension Service Director Glen Daniels said. “Then, when it came time to harvest, it started raining again.”

That rain caused a delay in harvesting a crop already damaged by the long dry spell.

“It was such a tremendous loss in quality and yield,” Daniels said. “A lot of the crop deteriorated, a lot of the beans rotted, the cotton rotted — it all went down with this bad weather.”

The declaration means that farmers have until July 26, 2010, to apply for emergency assistance loans to help with losses incurred between April 1 and Oct. 30, Concordia Parish Farm Service Agency Director Kevin Case said.

The declaration also guarantees that the parish will have a Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program, he said.

“SURE is a grant type program, whereas an emergency loan is a loan that has to be repaid over a series of years,” Case said. “A person applies for SURE and is paid due to their eligibilities — it’s kind of a subsidy program to help them get through the current crisis.”

The SURE program is authorized through the 2008 Farm Bill, and one of its requirements is that farmers maintain a certain level of crop insurance.

Daniels said that grant programs are especially needed right now.

“If it is just low interest loans, that’s not going to be much of a help to farmers in the parish,” he said. “Refinancing debt is not going to be a tremendous help to a lot of farmers.”

Concordia and Tensas parishes were already considered contiguous disaster areas due to a declaration about flooding related to the rain in Mississippi, and the latest declaration reciprocates that action and places Adams, Jefferson and Wilkinson counties in the contiguous disaster area category.