I’m looking for help in how other states handle the Farm Bill Tech program given internal (individual state) fiscal restrictions. For example, our program has run on a calendar year for the past 10 years. We were operating with a waiver from our State Treasury meaning we were able to receive funds from the NRCS (whenever a portion of our annual request became available), allocate and spend those funds without encumbering them. We have incredibly detailed spreadsheets tracking every penny as control measures. Due to recent fiscal changes internally, we are now faced with having to encumber funds before we can issue a purchase order (PO) to the conservation district (essentially, a contract). The problem is we do not receive all of our annual funding in one agreement to be able to cover the entire calendar year. There will be at least two amendments to complete our annual request. Therefore, we cannot issue a PO to the district that covers the whole year as we have previously.

Does anyone else receive their Farm Bill Tech dollars in little chunks? How do you manage it if you have to encumber the funds? Do you experience any gaps between when one amendment is about to expire and the next amendment has not come through? Could you offer any solutions based on how your state handles similar situations? HELP!!!! Thank you.