Work continues at local Farm Service Agency offices during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Coronavirus Food Assistance Program sign-up, acreage reporting and more. The WHIP+ program is on the back burner. Last week, North Dakota State Executive Director Brad Thykeson acknowledged the delays in getting WHIP+ funds to farmers. “We are number four in the nation as far as dollars sent out on the WHIP+ program and we’re also up there in applications, but that still doesn’t put us in a good spot, because we only have about 50 percent of applications processed. We have a lot of work left to do,” said Thykeson. “It’s a very clumsy program to administer, with some applications at 90 pages plus for producers to receive the benefits. The workload in our county offices is extremely high; When you get into a 90 page application, they have to study it like a book.” So far, $52 million in WHIP+ program funds have been distributed in North Dakota. Thykeson also said RMA data isn’t electronically transferring over so staff has to manually enter in the data. This makes the process longer. “Other states are struggling too, including Nebraska and Iowa. In North Dakota, we just finished corn harvest. Getting the RMA data complete was important to the WHIP+ program.” Thykeson was part of a webinar hosted by North Dakota Senator John Hoeven.
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