by Evaann Dorris
DBJ Contributing Writer
My grandfather farmed most of his life, and when poor
health robbed him of his ability to farm, he sat at the
large picture window of his home and watched the rest
of the world carry on the tradition steeped so strongly
in his community.
Through my years, as I’ve studied and reported on
the technological advances in agriculture, I’ve
tried to imagine my grandfather and how he could have
farmed in today’s modern age. I just can’t
picture him with a computer monitor in front of him while
he tracked prices or weather radars. I don’t think
he would have thrived very well in the computer age.
But we have to remember, for a man who learned to write
using a slate and chalk and didn’t have a television
until the latter part of middle age, computers were as
foreign to him as men walking on the moon would have been
to Abraham Lincoln. And, just for the record, my grandfather
was never completely convinced man walked on the moon.
However, farming and computers are now a natural and needed
combination. If you are making a full-time living at farming,
and you don’t interact with computers, then you
better start planning for retirement. Computers used to
be an option with the line clearly drawn between the have
and have nots—as in have the ability to turn on
a computer, read email, and check market prices and have
not the desire to even have the contraption in your office
or home.
But now, the need to become computer literate is getting
serious. We are talking about getting or not getting the
money for your crops.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced
a pilot program, which will allow farmers to file the
necessary paperwork for their loan deficiency payments
(LDPs) via the Internet. The program is being piloted
in one county in every state. It’s voluntary, but
pay attention - this is the wave of the future.
The lucky county (or unlucky depending on whether or not
you are in the aforementioned have or have not category)
in Mississippi is Montgomery County.
“This program saves America’s farmers and
ranchers time, energy and money, and it is an example
of how USDA is harnessing the power of the Internet to
better serve producers,” says Agriculture Secretary
Ann M. Veneman. “The pilot program is part of the
Administration’s e-Government initiative, the government-wide
effort to use technology to better serve individuals and
businesses across the country.”
The program allows producers to apply for and receive
LDPs online from remote locations such as their homes
or offices. Participating farmers no longer have to travel
to USDA Service Centers to receive their benefits. As
a result, the program reduces paperwork load and speeds
up payment processing.
The voluntary service has stringent security measures
to protect participants’ private information. Just
like traditional LDPs, only authorized federal employees
are given access to information that is submitted electronically.
To participate in the voluntary e-LDP pilot, producers
must meet all eligibility requirements for marketing assistance
loans and LDPs. Producers of barley, corn, grain sorghum,
oats, peanuts, rice, soybeans and wheat can take part
in the program. Eligible producers can choose to receive
LDPs for their crops in lieu of marketing assistance loans.
An LDP is the difference between the loan rate at a given
location and the market price for the applicable commodity.
Okay, I’m lost already. You mean if I were farming
I would have to understand and speak “government-ease,”
which is slang for bureaucratic red tape, but now instead
of at least getting to argue with a real person or even
a recording, all I could do would be bang on the key board
when I didn’t get the answer I wanted to hear?
No, Pop paw wouldn’t have been able to make the
transition. The only kind of farming he knew was the old-fashioned
get-yours-hands-dirty, work from sun up to sundown kind
of farming. The only records he kept on his crops were
the receipts stashed above the truck’s sun visor.
He would have been terribly suspicious of LDPs and the
premise the government was going to send him money, and
he would have been downright scared of the little man
in the computer when it told him “You’ve got
mail.”
Pop paw’s generation served a vital role in Mississippi
agriculture. They brought us from mules, hand-picking
cotton, and hand-milking cows, to tractors, cotton pickers
and milking machines. They learned and put into place
what their grandfathers could never have imagined. They
weren’t slow or stubborn - just surefooted and careful.
I don’t know about you, but when it comes to combining
home computers with government red tape, I think we can
all learn a thing or two from our forefathers.
Let’s all be surefooted and careful. DBJ
(Eva
Ann Dorris is an agricultural journalist and columnist
from Pontotoc, Miss. She can be reached at 662-419-9176
or eadorris@aol.com.)
