Two South Dakota counties have recently been declared as emergency disaster areas by the U-S Department of Agriculture’s Farm Services Agency.  Mead and Pennington counties qualified for the designation to receive low interest emergency loans due to having severe drought conditions for at least eight weeks.  Applications are due by January 23rd of 2023.  Emergency loans can be used to meet various recovery needs including the reorganization of a farming operation or the refinance of certain debts.  FSA will review the loans based on the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability.  Nine contiguous counties are also eligible for the low interest emergency loans.  Those counties include: Butte, Custer, Haakon, Jackson, Lawrence, Oglala, Lakota, Perkins, and Ziebach.