RSS Feeds--FSA Over NRCS

To track the competition (which is a figment of my imagination because all NRCS employees love all FSA employees and vice versa), score one for FSA. The FSA website displays the RSS feed subscription icon prominently. (I think it's new, although a user has been able to get news releases by email for several years.) I don't see the equivalent on the NRCS site.

Of course, the Assistant Secretary for Administration is a former head of NRCS, which means NRCS alumni have an edge at the upper echelons of the department.

NASCOE Update

The National Association of State and County Employees (NASCOE) is the employee organization for FSA. The President has a report of her meeting with Vilsack and various DC (temporary) bigshots. Most of it (all of it, actually) is inside baseball stuff, the general status of various programs and improvements, issues on the proper classification of different positions, etc.

One item of interest to me: " Plans for future of IT include a central application server which a county office user will access using a thin client. This will make the system easier to manage and upgrade. Data will be stored on a central database. " I guess, assuming broadband in all counties, the location of data has become irrelevant. Even today, we can move graphic information (GIS images) around the web fast enough to service people. Of course, by 2013 FSA ought to be getting its acreage data by download from the planters and combines which are guided by GPS.

Another thing I noted: absolutely no mention of any need to work with NRCS on computer implementation. (So much for Secretary Madigan's Info Share initiative, I guess. (That's geezer inside baseball.))

NRCS Ahead of FSA

NRCS has had its new head designated for 10 days now, but not FSA.

A Puff Piece for NRCS and FSA

This piece in the Huntingdon, IN paper puffs the NRCS and FSA conservation programs.

House Ag and Implementing Conservation Programs

House Ag had a hearing with NRCS and FSA, plus the OIG and GAO types, on problems with handling conservation program payments, including this GAO report. I briefly yield to my FSA partisanship and note the following excerpts from the IG's prepared testimony.

These problems occurred because NRCS lacked federal financial accounting expertise. Until 2004, NRCS had relied on FSA employees to help account for its transactions, and had not cultivated a staff of accounting professionals. Part of this problem also has to do with how NRCS understands its mission within USDA. Many NRCS officials perceive their primary role as providing technical and scientific assistance to producers. Training employees to correctly account for its activities was not the agency’s first priority.

We found possible noncompliance issues on approximately 40 percent of the[WRP] easement sites we inspected.

I'm wondering about the background of shifting payments from FSA to NRCS--presumably the NRCS interest groups had bigger clout on Capitol Hill than the FSA interest groups.

This area is of more than passing interest to me, given my guess that NRCS will be given responsibility for Vilsack's carbon offsets (remember, you heard it here first).

WHIP and Payment Limitation, NRCS and FSA

NRCAS published an interim final rule updating the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program (WHIP) regulations for the 2008 farm bill changes and other input. (This is a program whereby NRCS pays part of the cost of improving habitat for wildlife.) It includes this:

Section 638.7

"(f) Payments made or attributed to a participant, directly or indirectly, may
not exceed, in the aggregate, $50,000 per year.
(g) Eligibility for payment in accordance with 7 CFR part 1400, subpart G, average adjusted gross income limitation, will be determined prior to cost-share agreement approval."

I find it interesting because, as the AGI regs are FSA's responsibility, it implies a sharing of information, possibly an exchange of paperwork between the two agencies.

Transparency in USDA

I've blogged on this before, but the Environmental Working Group has an article from the Salina Journal. The issue is the extent to which FSA/NRCS information is publicly available--the 2008 farm bill inserted a prohibition on releasing data:

From the end of the article:

"When we got wind this was going to be inserted without any debate, we heard from two camps in the FSA," Cook said. "One saying they didn't agree with it, and thought we ought to know -- while another side helped draft it."

The privacy provision was inserted in conference committee, after both the House and Senate had approved different versions of the bill. Conference committees generally work out compromises between those different versions, but can also insert new provisions, which Cook said is what happened in this case.

Although I don't always like EWG's stands, I'm in favor of transparency here. (Though, inconsistently, I don't like the idea of private entities making bucks by serving as middlemen with the government.)

Crystal Ball on USDA Organization

A commenter on this post asks whether I think the possible reorganization of USDA will eliminate FSA? Dragging out my crystal ball, I see into the future and provide this answer: "Darned if I know".

There seems to be an ebb and flow to these things. Back in the Ford administration there was a push to co-locate county offices which looked forward to some consolidation of administrative functions. Then Carter came in and priorities changed. Around 1984 they tried to consolidate state offices in the northeast, but Congress killed that one. Sec. Madigan started "Infoshare" and the consolidation of county offices in 1991. That effort evolved into the 1994 reorganization splitting FmHA and hiding Rural Electrification within RD, and then the aborted Glickman proposal for merged administrative support. The new millennium seems to have been relatively quiet, except for some more office closings.

I wonder how much NRCS and FSA customers use the Internet instead of county offices. I say this because I'm struck every day by how small the NY Times is when it lands on my doorstep. Newspapers seem to be losing more and more ground to the Internet. Retailers are also hurting now (it's been years since my wife or I were in a department store, though that is partially a reflection of how cheap we are, as well as our use of online shopping). Thinking abstractly, one would say there's fewer and fewer commercial farmers and more and more capability to do things online, so FSA is and should be on the way out.

On the other hand, government reacts slowly to changes and rural areas have lots more clout than the burbs and cities. And Congress seems determined to keep making the programs more and more complicated. ACRE, SURE, and direct attribution are good insurance against major changes in the number or organization of offices.

NRCS and FSA

"Also on the horizon is a possible reorganization of USDA. Hagstrom says that Peterson has said he wants to reorganize the department, but that he may be more concerned with the contentious relationship between the Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.“He thinks they don’t work together very well. Well, here is a secret: They don’t want to work together very well. They want to remain separate,” Hagstrom says." Agweek

"Farm Service Agency Administrator Teresa Lasseter said streamlining the agency will continue under the Obama administration, with fewer offices available to serve ranchers and farmers across the country. Southwestfarmpress

They're Playing That Tune Again

From Keith Good's Farm Policy, excerpting from a Chris Clayton interview of the House Ag chief:

Mr. Clayton added that, “Peterson wants to reorganize USDA next year that will include emphasizing computer overhauls in major agencies such as the Farm Service Agency and the Risk Management Agency. Peterson said whoever takes the mantle at USDA needs to focus heavily on upgrading the computer systems and using software vendors that understand agricultural lending and risk management.

“Peterson added that he also thinks there are serious changes needed at RMA, particularly regarding how overall policy is created at the agency and implemented between the headquarter in Washington and satellite office in Kansas City, Mo.

Been there, done that, thoroughly disillusioned.

Bottomline--there's too many moving parts in USDA with too little forceful leadership. Add in a group of second-guessers (OMB and GAO, especially) and it's practically impossible to achieve the goals he wants.

USDA, EEO, and GIS

I blogged earlier about the problems USDA has in trying to get a reliable and effective reporting system for civil rights cases and issues (in the context of a critical GAO report).

This page of a new manual for USDA agencies on GIS (geo-spatial information) systems shows what the problems are in a different context: three different agencies (NRCS, FSA, RD), three different approaches to GIS data. (Almost 11 years since I retired and 16 years since InfoShare, I can only laugh. Matter of fact, it looks as if the entire manual is, from the right viewpoint, great comic material for a computer head. ) More seriously, I can only guess at the problems the authors of this manual had, so a tip of the hat to them.

Government Policing Farmers

The 1985 farm bill instituted compliance with "sodbuster/swampbuster" provisions as a prerequisite for earning certain farm bill payments. This was a major wrench for the USDA agencies, particularly the Soil Conservation Service (as NRCS was then called). SCS was used to being the farmer's friend and educator, helping install farm ponds and contour cropping trips. Sod/swamp moved them more into the policeman role, determining what the farmer had to do to comply. An interesting history could be written of the next 23 years, as farm groups lobbied for changes, conservation groups fought back, SCS and FSA felt caught in the middle.

Now we can anticipate other changes. As my right-wing friends might say, an ever-encroaching government bureaucracy taking away farmers' freedoms. Here's an piece in Mulch, on the problems of controlling run-off pollution in watersheds (a problem already faced in the New York City watershed). The writer struggles to plot a course between purely "voluntary" conservation measures, which aren't that effective, and alternatives, trying to identify alternatives which aren't oppressive. For an old cynic, the struggle is most interesting.

Sodsaver Provision

I hadn't been following this. At gristmill a story on the "sodsaver" provision: "The House and Senate versions of the farm bill both contained this new provision, which would have prohibited crop insurance and non-insured disaster payments for production losses to producers in any state who plowed up native grasslands in order to plant crops. This would have also prevented these farmers from receiving regular disaster payments, because farmers must first have crop insurance in order to be eligible for disaster payments."

Apparently the conference committee is restricting it to the desert pothole area (i.e., the area of small lakes/marshes left behind when the glaciers retreated that are great for ducks, etc.) and making it optional by the governor. That's much to the regret of conservationists. What concerns a former bureaucrat is the possibility the law will mix apples and oranges. Mostly in the past, eligibility provisions have been either/or, land or person. A person who violated the sod/swampbuster provisions would be ineligible for all payments everywhere. Or, if the program provisions on a farm were violated, there might be no payments for that farm. But this sounds as if it might be a mixture--someone plows grassland in ND and in SD, for example. ND says okay, but SD says no. Result--person is ineligible on all his land in SD but not in ND. Very difficult to control, unless the IT systems FSA uses have gotten considerably more sophisticated.

It's also interesting--under sodbuster NRCS would have to have an approved plan for the farm to make the producer eligible. Sounds to me as if this "sodsaver" provision is a tacit admission that NRCS was unable/unwilling to administer the "sodbuster" provisions as originally intended. No real surprise--NRCS as a bureaucracy did not have the culture of policing regulations.

Significant Change in Service Center Budgeting

If I understand the USDA's budget proposal, where in the past years the Office of Chief Information Officer had the funding for the "Common Computing Environment", now they've moved it back to the agencies:

"Funding of $64.2 million for certain IT operational expenses and related Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) initiatives which had previously been requested and provided for in the Common Computing Environment account managed by the Office of the Chief Information Officer, are requested in FSA’s salaries and expenses account for FY 2008. The maintenance of modern digitized databases with common land unit information, integrated with soils and crop data and other farm records and related initiatives, is vital to the development of more efficient and effective customer services at the Service Centers. In addition, FSA continues to review its county office structure consistent with Congressional guidance to obtain local input and thorough analysis to determine appropriate restructuring of its county offices."

Not sure of the significance, but interesting (inside baseball).

Conservation Compliance

Ken Cook of Environmental Working Group has a big report on the workings of "conservation compliance" (i.e., the requirement that farmers with highly erodible land be in compliance with a farm plan to receive some benefits from USDA). (Not clear when it was released--a letter to the ag committees was dated in May, but a press release in Sept.) Sounds as if much of it is based on a GAO report (no--I'm recovering from a cold and am not masochistic enough to plow through the entire report, particularly one as dispiriting as this.)

Why "dispiriting"? It's also fascinating. I remember talking with co-workers (CR, RA, and TMM) in 1984/5 when SCS as NRCS was then was pushing the "green ticket". There was skepticism: did they really know what they were getting into? The answer, of course, was: No. SCS was an educational and scientific agency, very uncomfortable with regulating farmer's behavior. And we in ASCS, as FSA was then, felt lots of Schadenfreude and not much helpful empathy at their predicament when the friendly puppy of an agency caught the car they were chasing and didn't know what the hell to do with it.

A few of us tried to work on data sharing between the agencies so the provisions could be enforced as the law required. But we stumbled, tripping over our own delusions, and mostly the fact that no one of importance in USDA really wanted to be that intrusive in farmer operations. (I remember visiting Sherman County, KS, on the western border of KS, in 1991 where the farmers were still hot over the idea that their land was highly erodible (rainfall < 20"). So we retired in disgust (ed: you're being overly dramatic.) .

I have to wonder where EWG was on Sec. Glickman's proposed merger of the FSA and NRCS support functions in the late 1990's. Had that been done, it might have been easier to get the sort of data they're asking for now. Or it might not. Never underestimate the power of delay.

Office closing--miscellaneous articles

Office closing--on Long Island--take the ferry to Connecticut is one alternative.
Closing ten offices in NE approved by Johanns--apparently he has no further political ambitions in his home state. And 16 in Georgia.

I'm still not seeing news of closing of NRCS offices at anywhere near the same rate as FSA. I don't know why--whether they aren't doing as much or it's not as controversial. The FSA mythology had the soil conservationist driving around to his clients so it might well be that office closings don't rate the notice. Why should I care whether the conservationist drives 20 miles or 40 miles to my farm?

Mixed Signals on FSA Office Closings

The House seems to be giving mixed signals on closing USDA offices. On the one hand, this provision is included in the appropriations bill (search through Thomas):

Provided further, That none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salary or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture to close or relocate any county or field office of the Farm Service Agency (other than a county or field office that had zero employees as of February 7, 2007), or to develop, submit, consider, or approve any plan for any such closure or relocation before the expiration of the six month period following the date of the enactment of an omnibus authorization law to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs for fiscal years after 2007 [NOTE: I take this to mean either a new farm bill or a 1-year extension of current farm programs--they're trying to cover the bases]: Provided further, That after the expiration of the six month period following the date of the enactment of an omnibus authorization law to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs for fiscal years after 2007 none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salaries or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture to close any local or county office of the Farm Service Agency unless the Secretary of Agriculture, not later than 30 days after the date on which the Secretary proposed the closure, holds a public meeting about the proposed closure in the county in which the local or county office is located, and, after the public meeting but not later than 120 days before the date on which the Secretary approves the closure, notifies the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate, and the members of Congress from the State in which the local or county office is located of the proposed closure. [This is the procedure that USDA seems to have been following until this, so presumably the idea is, Congress does a new farm bill, we wait 6 months to close offices. If the farm bill causes lots of work, there's an opportunity to reconsider. If it doesn't, then the Reps can say they tried.]

But from the Report on the bill (this isn't binding on USDA, but it explains intent):

Further, we are concerned about the restrictive FSA office closure language included in the bill. In many cases, the USDA has completed required steps to close certain offices under provisions set forth in fiscal year 2006, and again in the Continuing Resolution that agencies are operating under this fiscal year. Members are urged to consider these facts: there are 58 FSA offices that have no staff; 139 offices that have one employee; 338 that have two employees; and 515 offices that have three employees.

It is also worth noting that the funding level included in the bill for FSA salaries and expenses is $102 million below the President's budget request. As a result, the Democrat majority has significantly cut the appropriation below the request while prohibiting the FSA from closing unneeded offices. There are many States that, while not necessarily happy with proposals to close some offices, are willing to work with the FSA to close offices that should no longer be open. The minority worked with Chairwoman DeLauro to modify the language in the bill in order to continue making progress on this issue. Ranking Member Kingston offered an amendment that would allow FSA to close those offices that have zero employees, and the amendment was adopted by the full committee. People often ask why government can't run more efficiently. Closing FSA offices provides a good example. It's hard to run an agency with 435 managers second-guessing all decisions.

I interpret the Report language as saying--we recognize that Representatives want to protect their offices, but: be real--we can't keep all the offices open.

As a final note, there's no specific restriction on closing NRCS offices (except for generic restrictions elsewhere about not closing offices unless you notify Congress). So, if I'm reading it right, in New York where both FSA and NRCS offices are scheduled for closing, the one will be delayed, but the other could go through right away.

Your political system at work.

Farm Bureau Supports FSA

From a news article:

Kevin Paap, president of Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, who just returned from a trip to Washington, said Farm Bureau has some concerns with payment limits and means testing.

On the other hand, the organization supports switching the administration of farm bill programs to the Farm Service Agency from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

It makes sense to have those folks who are good at doing administrative stuff do that while having the folks who are good at technical assistance doing that, he said.

I suspect the outcome will depend more on accident and networking, than on logical arguments. You can (at least I can) hear the low level of interest Mr. Papp has in the issue. In the absence of great public concern, and with lobbyists on both sides of the issue, some one person who may feel strongly could sway the outcome. For example, should the Vice President decide to honor his father, who worked for NRCS, that could make a difference.