USDA-funded research · Montana Climate Office
Grounding FSA disaster assistance in reproducible data science
A USDA-funded partnership reassessing the data and thresholds that govern disaster assistance — so programs are delivered efficiently, accurately, and predictably to American producers.
Sustainable FSA is a three-year USDA research partnership led by the Montana Climate Office, working with the USDA Climate Hubs, the Office of the Chief Economist, and the Farm Service Agency to improve how disaster assistance programs are administered. The project produces authoritative, public data archives, reproducible analyses, and field-informed recommendations to support FSA county staff and the producers they serve.
About
A USDA partnership modernizing the data behind FSA livestock disaster assistance — so programs deliver effective, targeted relief to American producers.
Read moreData
Authoritative, versioned datasets that underpin the project's analyses and the federal disaster-relief programs they study. Every archive is openly licensed, fully documented, and accompanied by reproducible code.
Browse archivesPublications
Briefings, fact sheets, reports, and infographics from the Sustainable FSA project, alongside the graduate theses it has supported — written for the USDA staff, program leadership, and producers who work with livestock disaster assistance, and grounded in the project's public data archives.
Read the publicationsLibrary
The FSA handbooks, federal rules, and oversight reports that govern the Livestock Forage Disaster Program — archived here so the exact versions cited in the project's analyses stay accessible even after the agencies supersede or remove them.
Browse the libraryTeam
University of Montana researchers, faculty collaborators, and federal partners delivering the project — including four graduate-student theses supported or advised by the work.
Meet the teamCode
Every archive and analysis on this site is backed by an open, version-controlled repository — reproducible pipelines, documented data, and public history.
Visit GitHub (opens in new tab)