Acreage Reporting Requirements and Deadlines

May 13, 2020
By:

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) Executive Director Donny Green in DeKalb and Cannon counties reminds producers to report planted, prevented planted, and failed acres to establish or retain FSA program eligibility.

For planted crops, the following acreage reporting dates are applicable for DeKalb and Cannon counties:

May 31: nursery (field grown and container)
July 15: corn, soybeans, cucumbers, okra, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, squash, strawberries,
tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, and perennial forage (hay and pasture)
August 15: green beans, hemp
December 15: fall-seeded small grains (wheat)

The following exceptions apply to the above acreage reporting dates:

• The COVID-19 pandemic is posing challenges for 2020 crop year acreage reporting. As a result, any crop that has an acreage reporting date before August 1, 2020 will be considered timely filed if filed within 30 days of the acreage reporting date (listed above).

• If the crop has not been planted by the above acreage reporting date, the acreage must be reported no later than 15 calendar days after planting is completed.

• If a producer acquires additional acreage after the above acreage reporting date, the acreage must be reported no later than 30 calendars days after purchase or acquiring the lease. Appropriate documentation must be provided to the county office.

• If a perennial forage crop is reported with the intended use of “cover only,” “green manure,” “left standing” or “seed,” the acreage must be reported by July 15, 2020.

Producers must report crop acreage they intended to plant but, due to natural disaster, were prevented from planting. Prevented planting acreage must be reported on form FSA-576, Notice of Loss, no later than 15 calendar days after the final planting date, as established by FSA and the Risk Management Agency. According to Green, the final planting date for corn is May 20, 2020 and the final planting date for soybeans is June 15, 2020.

Producers with failed acres should also use form FSA-576, Notice of Loss, to report failed acres. For losses on crops covered by the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program and crop insurance, producers must file a Notice of Loss within 15 days of the occurrence of the disaster or when losses become apparent. Producers must timely file a Notice of Loss for failed acres on all crops including grasses.

Please contact the DeKalb/Cannon County FSA office at 615-597-8225 to schedule an appointment to file a Notice of Loss. To find your local FSA office, visit http://offices.usda.gov.

USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender.

May 13, 2020
By: Dwayne Page

A local liquor store is undergoing a change in ownership and the Smithville Mayor and Aldermen during a special meeting Tuesday night approved a certificate of compliance by the new owners.

Smithville Discount Wine and Spirits at 413 East Broad Street opened in 2015. The owner is Jim Smith but he is selling the business to Nita and Sherrod Patel pending approval of city and state conditions for the new owners’ liquor license. The Patels will be leasing the property from the landowner Randy Paris.

Under city and state laws, the aldermen must adopt a new liquor store owner’s certificate of compliance before he or she can make application to the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The agency which has the sole authority to grant a liquor license. The certificate of compliance signifies the store owner has met all the city’s requirements for an application to the state.

City Administrator Hunter Hendrixson and City Attorney Vester Parsley said the applicants have met conditions for approval of a certificate of compliance under the city’s liquor ordinance. One requirement is that the new owners, like the current one, must keep at least a $150,000 inventory of liquor at all times.

May 13, 2020
By: Dwayne Page

The City of Smithville and the DeKalb Utility District have amended a mutual aid agreement between the two utilities to sell water to each other during times of need.

Under the agreement, as amended, each utility will sell water to each other at the DUD’s established wholesale rate at the time of purchase since Smithville does not have a wholesale rate.  City officials say the DUD wholesale rate currently is $3.20 per 1,000 gallons but that could change over the life of the new five year agreement.

The Smithville Aldermen approved the new agreement as amended Tuesday night during a special meeting. The DUD board of commissioners have already adopted it.

The original agreement, approved in 2017, called for the city and DUD to sell water to each other at a rate of $2.67 per 1,000 gallons. The rate was later increased.

Last month attorneys for both sides proposed an amendment to the agreement which called for each utility to sell water to the other at a wholesale price but didn’t define an actual cost or how the wholesale rate was to be determined. The aldermen, though not opposed to the concept, asked for more specifics at that time before taking action.

For decades, the DeKalb Utility District had purchased water from the city to serve its customers but in 2017 the DUD opened its own water treatment plant. Since then the two utilities have operated independently of each other.

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