Even the government computers that run critical air traffic control systems are antiques of the digital age. So it's no surprise that Farm Service Agency computer snafus are short circuiting during the debut of SURE, the government's new permanent disaster program that is based on calculations of whole farm revenue.

The aid is no chicken feed: Growers may collect payments worth $50 to $100 per acre in parts of Iowa for their 2008 revenue "disaster," some land grant economists estimate, but it won't be without pain, suffering and long delays at FSA offices.

"This is such a mess that it is indescribable and it is going to get worse before better," one county FSA director e-mailed an Iowa grower last week. He warned it might take more than three weeks just to get an appointment to run the revenue calculations for his farm.

In Dickey County, N.D., farmer Bart Schott reports that his local computers have crashed and that some initial payments had to be recalculated because growers were overpaid. That's problematic since many local FSA offices were already understaffed. "2008 turned out to be a decent income year for us, so I personally wasn't going to sign up until I heard how larger payments were," Schott said.

In an interview with DTN at Commodity Classic last week, FSA Administrator Jonathan Coppess blamed delays on computer issues and noted that FSA employees must manually enter data on spreadsheets to determine if growers are eligible for payments. "Administering this in a modern age is a challenge," he said, although growers had already received $65 million since Jan. 4.

Sheer numbers of potentially eligible farmers add to the waits. To be eligible, growers must farm in a county declared a disaster, or adjacent to one. But that makes 83 percent of all counties in the U.S. geographically qualified, Coppess said.

In general, SURE is a whole farm revenue insurance guarantee for crop producers--the first time Congress designed a disaster program on total farm revenues rather than yield losses. It requires FSA offices to collect insurance records from the Risk Management Agency, even though the two USDA agency computers don't talk the same language. What's more it's collecting data on a lot of specialty crops that fell under the radar in the past.

Is SURE too complex to administer? Coppess said no. "You need RMA and FSA to communicate better. We've got employees out there doing calculations on a spreadsheet," he said. "It's a hard slog to do it.

"Complexity is here to stay in farm programs," he added. "We need to figure out how to implement and administer it, despite some of that complexity."

For calculators and more information on SURE, go to your county office or www.fsa.usda.gov. And let me know about your experience.

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