USDA Update

By Rod Johnson

December 24, 2004

Happy Holidays to you and yours! The USDA Service Center in Eads along with most other Federal and State agencies will be closed on Friday December 24 and Friday December 31 for the Christmas and New Years Holidays. If possible please delay your visits to the FSA and NRCS Offices until after the first of the New Year. We will be back at full staff at that time and will be better able to serve you. Right after the first of the year, we plan on processing advance January, Direct Payments to those producers who have signed all of the necessary forms for the 2005 program. We are current in issuing December, Direct Payments for those producers who have requested payment before the first of the year.

The Kiowa County Press will print their "Year in Review" issue next week so there will not be a USDA Update article. Happy New Year to you! The FSA and NRCS employees look forward to working with you in the New Year. What will the New Year bring? New terminology as we introduce all of you to Ortho and NAIP imagery. These are terms we will use to describe the new computer generated aerial photography of your farm and ranch land. I think you will be pleased when you see how this will work. We plan on holding an informational meeting with the computer image projected on a big screen so we can show you how we marked boundaries and computed acreage. At

the meeting we will have copies of all your maps for your review and we will explain the process for making corrections. We anticipate holding this meeting in February or maybe March. Walt Immer has been working very hard at checking all boundaries so the maps should be very accurate when you receive your copies. It has been very helpful to have someone with Walt’s knowledge of the county to make all the adjustments. If you see Walt and he looks a little bug-eyed, you will know it is because of all of time he has spent looking at property and field boundaries to get them as accurate as possible.

Telephone 719-438-5851 FSA (Ext 2), NRCS (Ext 3). E-mail individuals firstname.lastname@ co.usda.gov (Example rod.johnson@co.usda.gov, , walt.immer, nadene.gaynor, dawna.weirich, charla.ferris, marvin.watson, marlin.miller, brett.jones) Kiowa County FSA Web Site – http://www.fsa.usda.gov/co/County%20Webs/Kiowa_county.htm.