USDA looking at closing 665 local offices

As outlined in the document, the department would shutter an estimated 665 of the 2,353 offices nationwide.

J.B. Penn, undersecretary for the Agriculture Department’s Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services, said that he had not seen the document obtained by the AP but that the numbers cited were inaccurate.

He said the agency’s main concern was not closing offices. “We may consolidate functions, but we’re going to provide improved service.”

“When you talk about closing offices, people think you’re taking away something from them,” he said. “That’s not the objective at all — we’re going to be giving them something more.”

Penn discussed the plan to modernize FSA offices in briefings this week with chairmen of the Senate Agriculture Committee and House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. More congressional briefings were planned.

State FSA directors are coming to Washington next week for a briefing on the plan.

As the central link between farmers and the department, FSA offices help farmers obtain loans and get payments from a number of farm programs. The federal agency has changed names over the years, but its network of offices in local communities dates to the 1930s.

The department’s goal is to modernize a system now burdened with rustic technology and underused offices. The FSA uses computer systems from the mid-1980s that can’t use the Internet. The agency has an office in virtually every rural county in the nation, no matter how close together two county offices are.

“A lot of farmers go into an office now, and there are two full-time employees, and they have to wait a long time to get service,” Penn said. “When they finally do get service, the employee doesn’t have the experience or the knowledge of a particular program that they need.”

In some offices, it costs $2 to distribute every dollar of benefits to farmers; in others, it costs less than a penny to deliver a dollar’s worth of benefits, Penn said.

Penn said he had never seen the FSA “working document” obtained by the AP. He said officials haven’t drawn any conclusions on reams of raw data generated as the agency develops its modernization plan.

Republicans in Congress reacted cautiously. Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, hasn’t signed off on a plan or seen specifics. He met Wednesday with Penn to discuss the plan.

“If the goal is to modernize the agency and to train employees for continued service improvement to the customers, the producers, then he understands that reasoning,” said Keith Williams, a spokesman for Chambliss.

Another Agriculture Committee member, Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., called the timing inapt, because Congress may soon be considering disaster aid for farmers battered by Hurricane Katrina, drought and other natural disasters.

He said lawmakers may try to amend a spending bill to delay the modernization plan. But like Chambliss, Talent was open to the idea.

“For me, the issue is service — do our producers have convenient access to an FSA office? That’s the key to me. That’s more important than any particular number of offices,” Talent said. “Now, I am concerned about closing that many offices and the impact that will have on services.”

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican Agriculture Committee member, said he would look carefully at any plan to close FSA offices in his state to make sure services aren’t reduced, “especially with the high cost of energy already an enormous burden for our farmers and ranchers.”

Congressional Democrats were hostile to the idea.

“If this is true, it’s another slap at South Dakota farmers and ranchers from the Bush administration,” said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., a member of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee. “There’s no substitute for the face-to-face interaction that producers have with FSA personnel. They need the opportunity to ask questions, to explain their circumstances. To lose that opportunity is going to be a serious problem.”

The top Senate Agriculture Committee Democrat, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, said he doesn’t know specifics of the plan but that it seems drastic.

“Shuttering nearly a fourth of the FSA offices in Iowa can only lead to more inconvenience and less service for Iowans,” Harkin said.

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On the Net:

Farm Service Agency: http://www.fsa.usda.gov

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov