Livestock disaster aid cost more than $4 billion this year, more than expected, says Agri-Pulse, “even as auditors were finding that earlier payments under the program were rife with errors.” Agri-Pulse says USDA’s inspector general reviewed 155 payments made through the Livestock Forage Program during 2010 and 2011 to 120 producers in Texas and California “and found errors in 78 of the applications.” The errors, almost totally in over-payments, amounted to 7 percent of the $5.7 million disbursed to the producers. Many of the errors were in manual calculation of acreages, according to Agri-Pulse. USDA said it hoped to have an automated process in place by March 31 to calculate acreage.