2024 late-filed acreage reports
July 15, 2024, was the final acreage reporting date for 2023 for all crops except hemp (July 31, 2024). Any producer that did not file a 2024 acreage report to FSA by the deadline can late-file an acreage report with a verification fee. The evidence of the crop must exist and be verifiable. Most USDA farm programs administered by FSA require a timely filed acreage report fully certifying all crops and land uses on each farm. This includes row crops and pasture for livestock.
Hemp acreage reports are required by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) branch of USDA, the federal agency tasked with overseeing commercial hemp production. All hemp acreage reports require a hemp license issued by the state. FSA’s role in the process is to accept hemp acreage reports as required by AMS. This is the third year in Mississippi that production of commercial hemp for processing as fiber, CBD oil or seed has been allowed. THC content in the hemp will be monitored and may not exceed the limits established by legal guidelines.
Finally, producers should review their copies of all 2024 acreage reports to make sure all crops and planting dates are accurate. Now is the time to make any necessary corrections.
Most FSA acreage reports are used by producers to report crops and planting dates to their private crop insurance agents. This time of year, we tend to get a lot of calls from crop insurance agents questioning entries on the acreage reports that their clients have provided. Sometimes, it requires an FSA correction where the data submitted on producers’ maps was not loaded correctly, but more times than not, the data was loaded the exact way the producer submitted it.
Ultimately, it is the producer’s certification of his acreage and crops, it’s not FSA’s report of acreage. Bottom line, if something is incorrect, now is the time to discover and correct it, not after a claim is filed or an actual yield is being submitted to crop insurance, months from now, when it may be too late to correct.
FSA also reminds eligible farmers and landowners that the FSA County Committee elections are held each year, and Aug. 1 is the final date to submit nominations for the 2024 committee elections this fall.
Local Administrative Area (LAA) 2 (which includes the western Delta portion of the county) is the position on the county committee to be filled this year. Maci Flautt currently serves as committee member from LAA 2.