North Dakota is one of two pilot states for new FSA software called GEAR. However, ND FSA offices are already experiencing problems with this software.
From one of our local FSA offices:
Acreage Reporting will be significantly slower in ND this year for several reasons, but the main reason is GEAR will require FSA employees to hand trace each field boundary in the software if the entire field is not entirely planted to the same crop. Meaning all prevented plant potholes will have to be drawn in by FSA based on the producer’s physical acreage reporting maps.
Currently, this new software is not working as intended. We are experiencing issues with the software not saving the information we have loaded, our internet network does not seem to be strong enough for this software, and currently the software does not recognize prevent plant. We ask that you encourage your clients to report their acres as soon as possible and to avoid waiting until the deadline to report acres in attempt to help us better manage our workload. Requests for copies of FSA-578s will subsequently also be slower this year.
For ND producers: Please send our office copies of your completed FSA maps before you give them to FSA. If you have a spreadsheet with your acres and totals please send that to us as well.