Farm Service Agency Office Cuts Aim to Boost Efficiency

Sep. 19–A proposal to cut 665 Farm Service Agency offices nationally is part of a plan to improve efficiency and deliver more services to farmers and ranchers, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman said Friday.

A report called “FSA Tomorrow Document — Offices Impacted” shows the agency offices in each state, number of employees and number of offices that would be closed. The proposal would close about 30 percent of the 2,353 FSA offices nationwide, including 20 in Nebraska and 22 in Iowa.

The document doesn’t specify which offices would close. Those decisions would fall on state FSA directors, if the USDA goes ahead with the plan.

The FSA is the main USDA agency that contacts farmers and ranchers regarding government programs and services. Data compiled at FSA offices on individual farmers not only affect farm programs but also verify information for agricultural lenders.

Nebraska has 81 FSA offices and Iowa has 100.

Brian Wolford, executive director of the Farm Service Agency in Nebraska, said Friday that he knew nothing about the office closures or the FSA Tomorrow proposal.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns declined to comment on the proposed closures in an interview Thursday at Husker Harvest Days in Grand Island.

Ed Loyd, a USDA spokesman, said FSA Tomorrow involves modernizing the agency to serve people better. Office closures won’t produce cost savings because more money would be spent on training and information technology. Right now, he said, the agency also has too many offices with only one person and offices in close proximity to each other.

“This is a management issue,” Loyd said. “There are a number of offices around the country with not even one full-time staff.”

Consolidating offices would provide more staff members at each office to serve customers, Loyd said. Offices that remain open also are more likely to have Natural Resources Conservation Service technical staff and insurance people from the USDA’s Risk Management Agency.

“Where we can consolidate functions, we will do that,” Loyd said. “In the end, we’re looking to provide more services to farmers, not less.”

The Farm Service Agency has spent more than a year working to integrate a new software program to connect producers to FSA offices nationally. The software allows farmers to update farm and financial information online rather than going to an office.

But the software has not been installed at all FSA offices, and Loyd said it will take “a significant amount of work to do that around the country.”

“Right now, some of these FSA offices are using 1985 computer systems that don’t work with anything else,” he said.

—–

To see more of the Omaha World-Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.omaha.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.