USDA Update

by Rod Johnson

June 13, 2003

Severe hail cut two wide swaths through the county on Friday June 6. The hardest hit area is from up to 5 miles north of Highway 96 between Sheridan Lake and Towner and east of highway 385 south to the Prowers County line. The area hailed covers approximately 220 square miles (140,000 acres). The area from around Galatea and south to the Bent County line received hail both on June 4 and June 6. The affected area south of Galatea is approximately 150 square miles (96,000 acres). It is very discouraging to finally have a good wheat crop destroyed by hail after three years of drought.

On Monday, June 2, the computer system in the FSA Office suffered a lightning strike and got hit again, Friday, June 6. We have been getting things repaired but as of Wednesday, June 11, we are still not completely "healed". The computer technicians have told us we may see new problems showing up even after we think we are fixed. This has caused a disruption in the office operations. If you are traveling any distance to visit the FSA Office, you may want to call first to make sure everything is up and running. We can do some things manually but operations such as crop loans and payments require us to use the computer.

We have just returned from training on the Crop Disaster Program. We don't have everything we need to complete your disaster applications and the computer problems will cause further delays. We are asking everyone to please be patient while we get things put back together. To complete your application for the Crop Disaster Program, you will need to provide: the date crop was planted, date crop was destroyed if it didn’t go to harvest, what chemical and fertilizer was applied to the crop, what land preparations were made for planting the crop, what use was made of the damaged crop acres and if any acreage was planted to another crop. We will need this information on every crop on EVERY UNIT you have for Federal Crop Insurance. You will need to check your crop insurance records to determine where units are located.

We do not have this information for FCIC crops at the FSA Office. We already have this information for NAP crops. You must choose one year in which to receive disaster payments for all crops on all farms in the county, either the 2001 or 2002 crop year. If you are not sure which year to choose, you can provide information for both years and we will compute each separately to see which is higher. Owners may choose a different year than the operator.

We will notify you in this column and by mail when our computer system is repaired and we are ready to complete your applications.

As of the writing of this article, we have still not been advised if we will be approved for emergency grazing of CRP grass. The Colorado Governor's Office has requested the Secretary of Agriculture to approve several counties, including Kiowa, in southeast Colorado as drought emergency areas. The Colorado State FSA Committee is also meeting June 12 and will be reviewing the emergency grazing issue.