Streamlining Access to USDA Funds

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

This week we’ve been reporting on FarmRaise, a company that makes it easy to access and do ongoing reporting for financial incentives for sustainable agriculture. Their first incentive has been the NRCS’ EQIP program where they made it easy for farmers to check eligibility and apply in about 15 minutes. One question I wanted to ask co-founder and CEO Jayce Hafner is: isn’t that what the Farm Service Agency is supposed to do?

Hafner… “One of the things that's really awesome about the USDA is I don't think they're intentionally trying to make this hard for farmers. I think they really, really care about farmers. We partner really closely with the USDA and they are faced with a number of bureaucratic challenges that, you know, I at a start up, cannot even imagine, you know, what the challenges they're facing in terms of the information they have to collect from the farmers and checking all those boxes. And so the way we've been able to make it easy for the farmer, as we know these applications in and out. We know what data needs to be collected. We know what the jargon means. And so we are simplifying the language for the farmers. So it's much easier for the farmer to know exactly what they need to provide. And then two, we are getting rid of duplications. There's a lot of replication and information that the government asked the farmer to provide, and we eliminate that.”

Hafner said they also securely store the farmer’s data for future applications to be auto-populated, making it even faster and easier for farmers going forward.