By Darrell Hensley (Tennessee’s Pesticide Safety Education Program Coordinator)
Private applicators have only a few months in 2020 to renew their certification. If you currently have a valid private applicator card and you would like to renew it, you will need to attend a recertification meeting held by your local county extension office. The recertification period runs from January 1, 2020 until June 30, 2020. If you do not attend a recertification meeting during this period, your certification will expire and to renew it, you would need to attend an initial private applicator training event. Recertification meetings will be held by your local county extension office or you may attend an event online. We plan to have several in-formative topics available to help keep you informed on current pesticide related issues.
Remember, commercial applicator requirements are slightly different from private applicators. Commercial applicators are required to accrue points/CEU’s to maintain their certification. If they do not attend meetings which are assigned points/CEU’s, they will be required to re-take the certification exam. Commercial applica-tors may contact the Tennessee Department of Agriculture to determine if they have accumulated the required points to roll their certification into the new certification cycle @ 615-837-5148 or they may check online at TDA’s website: https://healthspace.com/clients/tda/state/weblive.nsf/pesticides.xsp
Additional information concerning CEU’s required to maintain certification may be found here:
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/agriculture/documents/pestcontrol/CEU-2020.pdf
For more information concerning the pesticide safety education program, please our web site at: https://ag.tennessee.edu/psep/Pages/default.aspx
Remember to Keep Your Certification Up To Date!