UCC crop lien filing rejected - agricultural collateral description issues
Been dealing with agricultural financing for 15 years and just had my first UCC-1 filing rejected by the SOS office. The issue seems to be with my crop lien collateral description. I described it as 'all crops, growing crops, and crop proceeds for 2025 growing season on described real property' but apparently that's too vague according to their rejection notice. The debtor is a family farm operation and we're securing a $850,000 operating line of credit. I've always used similar language for crop liens without problems. Has anyone else run into this with agricultural UCC filings lately? The loan closes next week and I'm scrambling to get this right. Any guidance on proper crop lien collateral descriptions would be hugely appreciated.
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Alice Fleming
Agricultural UCC-1 filings can be tricky because crop liens have specific requirements. Your description might need to be more specific about the types of crops. Try something like 'all corn, soybeans, wheat, and other crops now growing or hereafter planted on the described real property, together with all proceeds thereof.' Also make sure you're including the legal property description if it's a fixture filing.
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Hassan Khoury
•This is good advice. I learned the hard way that generic 'all crops' descriptions get rejected more often now. The SOS wants to see actual crop types listed.
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Steven Adams
•That makes sense. The farm grows primarily corn and soybeans with some hay ground. Should I list all three specifically in the collateral description?
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Alice Fleming
•Yes, definitely list the specific crops. Also consider adding 'and any other agricultural products' at the end to cover anything else they might plant.
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Victoria Stark
ugh this is exactly why I hate crop lien season. Every state seems to have different requirements for agricultural collateral descriptions. Are you filing this as a regular UCC-1 or are you doing a fixture filing? That might affect the description requirements.
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Steven Adams
•It's a regular UCC-1, not a fixture filing. The collateral is just the crops and proceeds, not any equipment or structures.
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Victoria Stark
•Ok good that simplifies things. Still frustrating when descriptions that worked before suddenly don't.
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Benjamin Kim
I had a similar rejection last month on a crop lien filing. What helped me was using Certana.ai's document verification tool. I uploaded my rejected UCC-1 along with our loan agreement to check for consistency issues. Turns out my debtor name had a slight variation from what was in the charter documents. Fixed that and the collateral description and it went through fine on the second try.
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Steven Adams
•Interesting, I hadn't thought about checking the debtor name consistency. The farm operates as an LLC so there could be variations in how the name appears in different documents.
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Benjamin Kim
•Yeah that's super common with agricultural LLCs. The tool caught that my debtor name was missing 'LLC' at the end compared to the secretary of state records. Simple fix but would have caused another rejection.
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Samantha Howard
•How long did it take to get results from that verification tool? Sounds useful for catching these kinds of issues.
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Benjamin Kim
•Pretty much instant. You just upload the PDFs and it flags any inconsistencies between documents. Really helpful for agricultural filings where there are so many details to get right.
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Megan D'Acosta
Are you sure you have the right debtor entity? Agricultural operations sometimes have multiple entities - the farm LLC, a separate equipment LLC, personal guarantors, etc. The rejection might not just be about collateral description.
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Steven Adams
•Good point. It's filed against the main farm LLC that's the borrower. But you're right they have equipment under a separate entity. This UCC-1 is just for the crop lien though.
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Megan D'Acosta
•Ok just wanted to make sure. I've seen cases where people file against the wrong entity and wonder why it gets rejected.
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Sarah Ali
For crop liens I always include the tax parcel numbers in the collateral description. Something like 'all crops growing or to be grown on real property described as [legal description] and identified by tax parcel numbers [numbers].' Gives more specificity about where the crops are located.
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Steven Adams
•That's a great suggestion. I have all the parcel numbers from the survey. Adding those would definitely make the description more specific.
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Ryan Vasquez
•I do this too for agricultural filings. Really helps avoid ambiguity about which property the crops are on, especially for larger operations with multiple parcels.
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Sarah Ali
•Exactly. And if they ever need to do a continuation or amendment later, having the parcel numbers makes it much clearer what collateral is covered.
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Avery Saint
this sounds like a nightmare. I'm supposed to close a similar agricultural deal in two weeks and now I'm worried about our UCC-1 filing. How specific do you have to get with the crop descriptions? Can you just say 'agricultural products' or do you need to list every possible crop type?
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Alice Fleming
•It's better to be specific about the main crops and then add 'and other agricultural products' as a catch-all. That way you're covered if they plant something different next season.
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Avery Saint
•ok that makes sense. better safe than sorry with these filings I guess.
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Taylor Chen
Have you considered whether this needs to be filed in multiple states? Agricultural operations sometimes have land across state lines and you might need separate UCC-1 filings in each state where the crops are located.
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Steven Adams
•All the farmland is in-state so we just need the one filing. But that's a good reminder to check that for multi-state operations.
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Taylor Chen
•Yeah I've seen deals where they missed filing in one state and it created perfection issues later. Always worth double-checking the property locations.
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Keith Davidson
What was the exact rejection reason code? That might give us a better idea of what specifically they want you to fix. Sometimes the rejection notices aren't super clear but the codes can be more helpful.
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Steven Adams
•The rejection notice said 'insufficient collateral description' but didn't give a specific code. Pretty generic feedback unfortunately.
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Keith Davidson
•That's frustrating. Generic rejection reasons make it harder to know exactly what to fix. But the suggestions here about being more specific with crop types should help.
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Ezra Bates
Try adding language about insurance proceeds too if the crops are insured. Something like 'including all insurance proceeds and government payments relating thereto.' Crop insurance payouts are often a significant part of agricultural collateral.
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Steven Adams
•Good call on the insurance proceeds. The farm definitely has crop insurance so that should be included in the collateral description.
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Alice Fleming
•Yes, insurance proceeds are crucial for agricultural collateral. Government payments too if they participate in any USDA programs.
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Ana Erdoğan
I wonder if there's been a recent change in how they're reviewing agricultural UCC filings. I've heard other lenders mention more rejections lately on crop lien descriptions that used to be routinely accepted.
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Victoria Stark
•I wouldn't be surprised. The SOS offices seem to be getting more picky about collateral descriptions across the board.
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Ana Erdoğan
•Right, it's like they're being extra cautious about anything that seems too general or vague.
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Sophia Carson
Just wanted to follow up - I actually used Certana.ai last week for a similar agricultural financing UCC verification. Really helpful for catching issues before filing. You upload your UCC-1 draft and loan docs and it flags any inconsistencies. Saved me from a rejection on a $1.2M farm credit line. The debtor name matching feature alone made it worth using.
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Steven Adams
•That sounds like exactly what I need right now. Quick question - does it check the collateral descriptions too or just debtor names and basic info?
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Sophia Carson
•It checks document consistency overall, so if your loan agreement describes collateral one way and your UCC-1 describes it differently, it would flag that. Pretty comprehensive verification.
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Samantha Howard
•This tool sounds really useful for agricultural filings where there are so many details that can go wrong. Might have to check it out for our next crop lien filing.
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Elijah Knight
Update: Got the refiling done and it was accepted! Used the more specific crop descriptions everyone suggested - listed corn, soybeans, hay, and other agricultural products with the tax parcel numbers. Also caught a small issue with the debtor LLC name that was missing a comma. Thanks for all the help, really saved me on this deadline.
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Alice Fleming
•Great to hear it worked out! Those small details like commas in entity names can definitely cause rejections.
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Benjamin Kim
•Awesome! The specific crop listing approach really does work better than generic descriptions.
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Avery Saint
•This gives me confidence for my upcoming filing. Going to make sure I'm super specific with the crop descriptions and double-check all the entity name details.
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