News

State officials collecting acreage information

Farm Service Agency officials are urging farmers to report flood and crop damage to their local FSA offices as soon as possible.

FSA state director Julia Wickard says the sooner the information is collected the sooner the state can work towards a disaster declaration.  “As we look across the state – we don’t have that data in from all counties,” she says.  “We’re close on several counties and hopefully throughout this week and next week we’ll be closer to knowing if we have a Secretarial disaster declaration that we can ask for for Indiana.”

Wickard tells Brownfield farmers need to have their acreage reported by July 15.  “If farmers have had issues with prevented planting they should come into the office, if they can’t get into the fields they need to report that,too,” she says.  “If they’ve had failed acreage due to some of the fields flooding they need to report that.  All of that data is used for the justification for a Secretarial disaster declaration.”

She says the total losses from the flood damaged crops won’t be known until after harvest this fall.