by Blair White

Few people enjoy talking about all the paperwork involved in farming. Crop insurance, FSA documents, equipment payments, bank statements, bills… you get the picture. What if there was a way PCCA could save you time and a headache or two by making it easier to share your information with industry professionals? Good news – there is. 

Through Member Access and the myPCCA app, you can easily access and share your crop information with whoever assists your operation. From growers to landlords, this system provides easy and up-to-date record keeping for your farming operation. PCCA takes pride in making the sharing of information between industry individuals easy and efficient. 

“PCCA wants our grower-owners to be as efficient as possible when dealing with the details of their farming operations,” said Corey Smyth, PCCA’s Director of Cotton Services and Gin Accounting. “By sharing common ownership with our cooperative gin partners, we want to provide resources that benefit our growers, their gins, and other agricultural businesses they need to grow a successful crop.” 

Kathy Fowler owns Fowler Agency in Memphis, Texas, with additional locations in Altus and Elk City, Oklahoma. She has served farmers in the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma since 1988. As a crop insurance agent and PCCA grower-owner, Fowler understands how vital the flow of information is from one entity to another – especially when it comes to the consistency and validity of data. 

“Being able to have the producer go back, look at his production, and verify that what we have on record is the same thing that PCCA’s software has is always beneficial,” Fowler said. “Furthermore, it makes that process much smoother. It is the information that is coming from the gin, the producer provides it to us, and nothing is missing because the entire record set is there organized by year.” 

The end game of providing useful software is to add value to a grower’s operation. To do that, maintaining the transparency of all parties involved is essential. Sharing information via PCCA software provides clarity, leading to fewer mistakes down the road. 

“The grower can be transparent with their landlord, or crop insurance agent, and people appreciate that,” Fowler said. “It’s always nice for a grower to come in this time of year and pull up their account. We make sure that the account matches our crop insurance paperwork, such as farm names or the block. We just make sure that the unit structure, the farm name, and FSA number on the PCCA grower software matches the crop insurance paperwork.” 

In addition to transparency, the information provided by PCCA allows producers to assess their operations better. 

“The PCCA software is very adaptable to the grower’s operation,” Fowler said. “They can individualize their operation with different account numbers. Extension and the universities still do quite a bit of research, but really the grower’s own data is what they need to be assessing each year. It allows the growers to tailor to their individual operation and drill down to the data. I think as we go forward with precision farming and technology, the more detailed data that that producer has, the better.” 

This information proved helpful to growers during the pandemic when many government offices were closed or understaffed, but farm business still had to be executed. Producers were able to look up information without calling other businesses because of the Member Access software. 

“The partnership between the producer, crop agents, and PCCA is vital,” Fowler said. “I appreciate what PCCA does with the software and that they are ready to adapt or change to improve services for their producers. Whenever the CFAP and QLA came out, farmers had those records but calculating those records took a bit of time. So, for the producer to be able to do those pieces themselves not only helped them be more efficient, but also more in control of their own operation and their own business.” 

With the click of a button, producers with PCCA’s Member Access can retrieve all the crop information related to their account. Some of the most popular forms and information sheets shared between entities include: 

503 Forms

• Includes government and industry production information 
• Provides third-party validation 

Bale Listing 

• Can be emailed to your insurance agent in Excel format 
• Allows for greater ease of quality adjustments and faster-paid claims 

Quality (Class) Download 

• Can be imported into crop insurance claims software by an adjuster 
• Used for quality loss adjustment claims 

Government Programs 

• CFAP and QLA 
• Still available and have been repurposed for help with farm decision making 
• PCCA provides information for the producer to complete the self-certification forms depending on the program 
• Mainly used by FSA