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his income, yet his indebtedness and bills remain the same. They need to be 

 allowed the status to apply for federal disaster relief so that they have some 

 income to make payments. 



Another recommendation we have for improvement of the federal disaster 

 program is a fair detennination of actual crop losses and prevented planting 

 for those farmers enrolled in the Integrated Farm Management Program 

 Option - IFMPO. Some of our members are enrolled in this program and 

 report that county ASCS offices don't know how the disaster program will be 

 applied to tliem. These producers are enrolled to establish crop rotations 

 and other soil conserving practices, but there is confusion about whether a 

 crop that couldn't get planted will be counted as prevented planting or part of 

 their rotation. We recommend that USDA and Congress ensure that 

 enroUees of this program are not penalized for their conserving practices, and 

 that they be allowed to apply and receive disaster assistance to the full extent 

 possible. 



On the credit side, my husband and 1 have 3^ cow-calf operation of eighty 

 head of stock cows which calve from March to May. Wlien tlie rain came 

 this spring, llie small creek running tlirough our pasture flooded more than 

 anything we'd seen in our twenty two years of farming here. 



We lost ten calves when die cows forded the creek and the calves 

 followed. They lost their footing in the rapid flowing water and drowned. 

 This loss amoimted to over $4,000. I went to the local Farmers Home 

 Administration office to see if the emergency Ipan program could help. Here 

 is the huge application packet that I was given - it's sixty seven pages, more 

 like a booklet. Also, 1 had to fiU out the same cash flow, crop production 

 history, livestock sales records and expenses for the previous five years, an 

 enormous paperwork burden. I would have had to fill several of these sixty 

 seven pages out five times for this five previous years' records. I am the 

 person in our fanning operation that does the paperwork, and I also handle 

 books for a local business each day, so paperwork is nothing new to me. 

 Most people who are discouraged from applying for an FmHA emergency 

 loan because of the huge paperwork mess. 



The FmHA emergency loan program is the same bureaucratic nightmiu-e 

 that it has been for the last several years. A farmer is supposed to show a 

 loss of 40 percent for each commodity in order to be eligible. At the same 



