South Carolina farmers impacted by Hurricane Helene, as well as tornados, floods and droughts that hit the state in the last two years, can apply for a second round of federal aid.
The application period opened Monday for 2023 and 2024 natural disaster-related crop losses for which farmers did not have crop insurance.
The aid can also help insured farmers recuperate any minor losses that were not enough to trigger an insurance payout, as well as damage to crops that reduced the sale value of those crops.
The U.S. Farm Service Agency has a total of $16 billion it can award nationwide for what’s known as the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program.
From the first funding round, about 2,120 South Carolina farmers received a total of $42.6 million in aid, mostly for losses to corn, peaches, soybean and cotton crops.
About $10.3 billion still remains available in the national program, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Farmers have through April 30, 2026, to apply for these dollars.
When it comes to drought relief, eligible counties in 2023 include Anderson, Cherokee, Chester, Fairfield, Greenville, Laurens, Newberry, Oconee, Pickens, Spartanburg, Union and York. In 2024, those counties are Clarendon, Darlington, Dillon, Florence, Horry, Lee, Marion, Sumter and Williamsburg.
Applications also opened Monday for dairy farmers who had milk spoil or farmers whose crops were ruined while stored in grain bins on the farm.
The Milk Loss Program provides up to $1.65 million in payments to eligible dairies. The on-farm stored crop program provides for up to $5 million.
Farmers have until Jan. 23, 2026, to apply for these two disaster programs.
All of this aid applies nationwide and is separate from a South Carolina-specific grant, which the federal agriculture agency awarded to the state in September.
That $38 million grant applied to farmers and timber companies across 33 of South Carolina’s 46 counties.
That grant covers damage to trees and crops that can take multiple years to mature, such as pecan trees. It also covered farm buildings, irrigation equipment, on-farm roads and fish hatchery equipment, as well as losses for farmers who couldn’t get their crops to market because of storm damage, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
The application period for that money has not yet began, according to the department’s website.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the SC Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
U.S. allows more foreign ag workers, eases off ICE raids on farms
BY: TIM HENDERSON - NOVEMBER 25, 2025 5:34 PM
The Trump administration is making it easier for farmers to employ guest workers from other countries by speeding up approval of temporary visas and lowering wages.
Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in recent months appears to be refraining from conducting agricultural workplace raids, even as it scours Democratic-led cities for immigrants who are in the country illegally.
“We really haven’t seen agriculture targeted with worksite enforcement efforts, and early this year we did,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
The shifts come as many Americans are concerned about food costs continuing to rise, creating political problems for a president who campaigned on lowering them. In September, grocery prices were 2.7% higher than a year earlier, according to the Consumer Price Index. But the total hike since pre-pandemic 2020 is 30%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Last week, the administration also announced it would lift tariffs on some foreign food products, including bananas, beef, coffee and tomatoes.
To ease labor shortages on farms and ranches, the administration last month made changes to the federal H-2A visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers for temporary agricultural jobs when there aren’t enough U.S.-born workers available. Under the new rule, the Department of Homeland Security will approve H-2A visas more quickly.
“Our immigration system has been broken for decades, and we finally have a President who is enforcing the law and prioritizing fixing programs farmers and ranchers rely on to produce the safest and most productive food supply in the world,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in an email to Stateline.
But the move to increase the supply of foreign agricultural workers conflicts with a July statement by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that “the promise to America, to ensure that we have a 100% American workforce, stands.”
Rollins also said the administration was committed to the mass deportation of immigrants who are here illegally, but that it would be “strategic so as not to compromise our food supply.” Ultimately, she said, the solution would be increased automation of agricultural jobs.
The government has issued about 420,000 H-2A visas for agricultural workers every year since 2023, which amounts to about half of the 812,000 agricultural worker jobs. They are concentrated in states that grow fruits and vegetables as opposed to grains, which are increasingly planted and harvested using machines. The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule.
Almost half the H-2A visas in the 2025 fiscal year were in Florida (60,000), Georgia (44,000), California (37,000), Washington state (36,000) and North Carolina (28,000).
Lower wages
The new H-2A rule also includes new hourly wage guidelines that vary by state but are lower than previous wages, and allows employers to charge workers for housing that used to be free. In North Carolina, for instance, the new rate is $11.09 for unskilled workers compared with $16.16 last year. In California, the rate is $13.45 for unskilled workers compared with $19.97 last year, though minimum wage laws in California and some other states would apply to those jobs, according to a Cornell University analysis.
In North Carolina, farmers are looking forward to lower labor costs, said Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, a trade association that brought 11,000 guest workers to the state through the H-2A guest worker program last year.
“If you think farmers are making more money in these conditions, you’re wrong. They’re going broke,” Wicker said. Workers will take a pay cut under new guidelines and will have to pay for housing, but that may help farmers stave off bankruptcy, he said.
“I’m not saying the workers are going to be happy about this, but I think they’ll come back. Wages have gone down before and they kept coming,” he added.
Jeffrey Dorfman, an agricultural and resource economics professor at North Carolina State University, said the changes will be a boon to the state’s farmers.
“The move to lower the H-2A wages by the Trump administration will be very well received by growers in North Carolina and will save farmers tens of millions of dollars statewide,” Dorfman said. “For many farmers, it will turn money-losing crops into money-making crops, if prices stay about where they are now.”
Unionized California farmworkers are opposed to the pay cuts and loss of free housing in the new guest worker visa plan, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers, which represents about 10,000 workers in California.
First came the raids, which hurt workers, and now in order to appease business interests, they make all these concessions on wages and the guest workers program.
– Antonio De Loera-Brust, United Farm Workers
The union sued the administration over ICE raids in the fields earlier this year, but recently “it’s been pretty quiet,” he said.
“For us it’s been really a one-two punch,” De Loera-Brust said. “First came the raids, which hurt workers, and now in order to appease business interests, they make all these concessions on wages and the guest workers program.”
Fewer raids
The administration quickly walked back a June directive to avoid raids on the agriculture and hospitality industries. Nevertheless, ICE raids on those employers have been more infrequent in the months since.
In June, ICE raided a dairy farm in New Mexico and a meatpacking plant in Nebraska. Since then, the agency has raided only a handful of food and agriculture employers, such as a July raid on a California marijuana grower and an Arizona restaurant chain, and a September raid to arrest Wisconsin dairy workers.
Earlier this month, ICE agents descended on an onion farm in Northern California, arresting four immigrants on charges of illegally selling farmworker visas.
Even as ICE ramped up its activity in North Carolina cities such as Charlotte and Raleigh, Wicker, of the growers trade group, said farms in the state have not been targeted.
Gelatt, of the Migration Policy Institute, said that’s been true of farms and ranches in many states since June.
“In past administrations we’ve seen a very quiet de-emphasis of immigration enforcement at farms. You don’t need to make an announcement. You don’t need to fight in the courts,” Gelatt said. “It is possible just to direct enforcement activities away from farms. It’ll be hard to know if that’s happened now, but I would not be surprised.”
While farmworkers in California are seeing some relief from raids, life is still uneasy for them, De Loera-Brust said.
“Overall, they have clearly slowed down [raids] in ag areas, but that’s not policy. They could resume at any time. People are living with uncertainty,” he said.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
Tim Henderson covers demographics for Stateline. He has been a reporter at the Miami Herald, the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Journal News.
