Farm Service Agency programs address record tornado day

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Disaster assistance for producers and training new staff has been among the many focuses of the Farm Service Agency’s Illinois offices over the last several months.

“One of the key things we’ve been working on is following up on some of these weather events,” said Scott Halpin, state FSA executive director.

“Over the last two years in Illinois, we seem to have more frequent and a little bit more violent events that might not get national attention, but if that happens to your farm, it’s personal.

“We have some programs that can help clean up maybe some forest damage or rebuild some buildings with low-interest loans and other programs. We’ve been following up on some of those recent disaster events that have happened in Illinois.”

The National Weather Service confirmed a one-day record of 48 tornadoes across Illinois on July 15 and four the previous day.

On the evening of July 15, a derecho brought tornadoes, strong straight-line winds and heavy rainfall to a large portion of the Midwest.

EF2 tornadoes were reported in Joe Daviess, Stephenson, Will and southern Cook counties. Tornadoes ranging from EFU to EF1 were documented across a broad area of the northern half of Illinois.

Winds were documented at 105 mph near Speer on the Stark-Marshall county line. Strong downburst winds with guests estimated at 90 mph hit DeKalb, Kane and DuPage counties.

There was heavy rainfall and flash flooding near and south of a Galesburg to Sullivan line. The heaviest rain fell over Fulton and Mason counties where 4 to over 7 inches were documented along with the Rockford area.

Heavy rains contributed to the failure of the Nashville City Reservoir Dam on July 16.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has technical and financial assistance available to help farmers and livestock producers recover from these adverse weather events.

Impacted producers should contact their local USDA Service Center to report losses and learn more about program options available to assist in their recovery from crop, land, infrastructure and livestock losses and damages.

Acreage Report

Halpin said the FSA office completed its efforts collecting acreage information from farmers by the July 15 deadline.

Many USDA programs require producers to file an accurate acreage report by the deadline in order to receive program benefits.

“That’s a pretty important date for us in Illinois because it’s huge workload, getting farmers to come in and tell us their maps and acres. Our offices really stepped it up and got through that task,” said Halpin during Ag Day at the Illinois State Fair.

Staffing, Training

The Illinois FSA has also been filling staff openings and all that goes with along with that task.

“FSA has been really busy the past couple of years trying to re-staff offices and then, along with that, train those folks,” Halpin said.

“FSA is a customer-facing business. Our job is to help producers, and when you change over staff like we have, you have to give that staff the tools to be able to confidently service our producers.

“So, we’ve been really focused on that and we’re doing a really good job. Our county offices are really stepping up to help producers.”

On a side note, the state director is owner/operator of Halpin Farms and Halpin Farms Cattle along with his parents and brother in Grundy County, and the family has had entries in livestock shows for many years.

“This is the first year in a lot of years that we’re not showing at the Illinois State Fair,” he said.

This year’s Ag Day drew a large crowd of visitors from across the state to celebrate the industry and recognize its major impact on the Prairie State’s economy.

“This is a heck of a crowd that turned out on Ag Day. It’s good to get all of the commodity groups and all of the agencies together in one place and just have conversations about agriculture,” Halpin said.