USDA and Rural Development

 Politico has a piece on USDA's challenges with rural development. Some excerpts:

“We were in the community earlier today of 130 people,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview last month as he toured the Delta region of Mississippi. “The mayor had zero full-time employees. There is no way that community could ever qualify or ever know how to qualify. Those are the communities we need to help.” 

The Agriculture Department oversees the largest set of programs focused on rural communities — roughly 40 — but there are more than 400 programs operating across the federal government

The wide swath of programs and the influx of money from Congress is intensifying long-standing concerns about how well federal money to help rural communities is getting to its intended recipients. In response, the White House has tasked the Agriculture Department with coordinating a pilot program, the Rural Partners Network, to help ensure the funding reaches the poorest and most underserved communities in the country. It is launching in five states and with three Native American tribes this spring to start, with plans to expand to another five, as well as Native Alaskan communities, in August.

 Rural Development staffing, specifically, has decreased by a third over the last decade, while their portfolio of responsibilities has increased by 80 percent, according to Justin Maxson, deputy undersecretary for rural development. In addition, 47 percent of Rural Development staff are eligible to retire.

This is Not Invented Here run rampant. Why do we have so many rural development programs--because everyone, in Congress and think tanks, everyone, thinks they have a better idea than what exists. So instead of modifying and improving an existing program, the incentive is to add a brand spanking new program you can boast to your constituents about, hopefully get reelected. 

Ignore the fact that it will taken the bureaucracy time to get up to speed on the program, even with the dubious assumption that what you've written into law makes some sort of sense.  So over decades of Congress doing their NIH thing,  the poor bureaucrat has to try to understand 40 programs, most of which, like ships, have attracted barnacles of interpretation.  And remember, the more time spent in trying to understand 40 programs means less time getting out and explaining them to the part-time unpaid mayor of a town with no stoplight, and helping her complete the forms and follow the process, much less implement a successful grant in the way Congress envisioned, long ago and far away.

So after years of this, and multiple attempts to reform and restructure the bureaucracy we come up with a new idea.  We need a new bureaucracy--the old one is too old, tired, disillusioned, and waiting to retire.  So instead of fixing those problems we'll create a new structure, where we can start from scratch and do it right.  We'll call it a pilot program--if it works we can expand it. Will we, the sponsors be around years later to assess its results and kill it, fix it, or expand it? 

ROTFLMAO

 

Agriculture Development Lessons from Outside US

I think the following analysis applies equally to current problems in developing nations and to the history of agriculture in the US,  particularly when you consider the South from 1865 to 1985 or so:

In our evaluations, we often see different results across different segments of farmers—even when assistance is pretty uniform. Farmers with relatively high incomes tend to leverage their access to financing and irrigation to take full advantage of training, often making dramatic gains in production and sales in just one season. In contrast, subsistence farmers and women have more difficulty improving their situations through training, given the multitude of constraints that they face. As a result, we have found income gains concentrated among the top quartile of farmers, with more than half of farmers no better off than when the program began. These findings highlight a natural tension in the sector between helping the poorest of the poor reach food security, on one hand, and helping more established producers formalize their operations, on the other.

USDA Reorganization

A post here on it at ThinkProgress.

The USDA report to Congress on the proposal.

Basically it would move NRCS, RMA, and FSA under one new Undersecretary, leaving FSA and FS each with their own Undersecretary.

This sentence from the USDA post perhaps hints that there will be more attention to the consolidation/cross-agency work that has been going on over the last 26 years:

Locating FSA, RMA, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service under this domestically-oriented undersecretary will provide a simplified one-stop shop for USDA’s primary customers, the men and women farming, ranching, and foresting across America.

 The proposal gives more prominence to the FAS and international trade, which is strongly supported by the ag interest groups, which may be enough to overcome concerns among the conservation types over a possible/perceived downgrading of conservation.

We'll see.

The Receipt for Service II

I've got a problem with the Receipt for Service implementation. Just in terms of bureaucracy and system design, county employees are asked to dual-task, do the work to support what the customer wants or needs plus as a separate operation record the history of the encounter. The extra work isnot likely to please the employee and the fact it's separate increases the likelihood it won't get done, undermining the validity of the statistic

A separate problem arises when it's the producer/farmer herself going online to do the work, as for example the new NRCS process.  How are those transactions going to be tracked?

USDA "Receipt for Service" Initiative I

USDA's Office of Advocacy and Outreach published an FR notice of a June meeting on USDA's "Receipt for Service" initiative.

What is the initiative?  Damned if anyone could tell from the notice.  There's no description of what it is, beyond a reference to a paragraph in the 2008 farm bill, and an amendment in the 2014 farm bill.  No links, no nothing.

But I've belatedly discovered that one can highlight a phrase, right click, and get an option to use Google to search for the phrase.  So what did I discover?

Three years after the 2008 farm bill, in 2011, OCIO published a department reg requiring the field agencies to issue AD-2088 when requested.  In January 2012 FSA issued a notice on it, NRCS issued the equivalent, RD apparently didn't issue anything, at least unlike the first two they don't show up on the first page of Google results.  The AD-2088 basically provides blanks for a narrative description of what service the farmer requested, and what happened to the request.  Importantly, the 2008 provision only required the AD-2088 be issued if the farmer requested it. Also important--the Department reg didn't require any reports.  I suspect, without researching it, that reports were never required.

 Exploring further, it seems Congress, in their wisdom, in 2014 amended the 2008 provision to require issuing a receipt in all cases.  As a result, NRCS, FSA, and RD got together and did an on-line app, one which requires a 27-page manual: "Web Receipt for Service (webRFS) User’s Guide".  FSA issued a notice, CM-753, which includes a memo signed by the Food and Agriculture council, to the state directors plus the Q&A's for FSA. [Note to self: how'd I miss it last fall?]

Apparently webRFS is the front-end to a database, which is searchable, and presumably will support statistical reports.

Now, back to the meeting:  the material on the webRFS says that it's "Phase I" and that there will be an evaluation of the webRFS and the need for any additional action.

Reinventing Government--How Soon We Forget

Remember Al Gore?  And his reinventing government?  Apparently neither GAO nor USDA do.

A quote from a new GAO report:

In fiscal year 2012, USDA policy on supervisory ratios did not align with Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance that states that an analytical approach can help agencies achieve the right balance of supervisory and nonsupervisory positions to support their missions. Instead, USDA's policy stated that all its agencies, regardless of their missions, should aim for a target ratio of one supervisor for at least nine employees (1:9). USDA officials were not able to provide a documented basis for this target ratio. In addition, USDA did not ensure that the service center agencies calculated their supervisory ratios the same way. As a result, USDA did not receive comparable information on supervisory ratios.

 Now I firmly believe that Al's National Performance Review  included an initiative to reduce the number of supervisors (though I don't see it highlighted in the linked document).  I remember because in ASCS what happened was that work units were renamed without much real change in function.  I also remember because my branch ended up growing to 14 or so people, more than I could effectively manage, particularly given my weakness for taking on additional projects.  (Though I can't really blame Al for that growth.)

I haven't read the report, just the summary, but IMHO a fixed supervisor/employee ratio makes no sense.

A Study in the "Iron Triangle"

Shortly after being reelected, Rep. Emerson of Missouri is resigning to work for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association .

I remember, sometimes I think that's all I do is remember, when President Reagan wanted to get rid of the Rural Electrification Administration.  Didn't happen, and this helps to explain why:

NRECA represents more than 900 rural cooperative utilities in 47 states that have a combined national membership of more than 42 million customers. When the group and its members come to Capitol Hill, they’re people who know the lawmaker’s district.
That base supplies a veritable army of 2,500 to 3,000 co-op members that NRECA brings to Capitol Hill every year, outgoing NRECA CEO and former Oklahoma Rep. Glenn English said in an interview.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/jo-ann-emerson-nreca-84813.html#ixzz2EgMQpQXo

Once Rural, Always Rural

And, a press release a while back from Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) stated that, “Today, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to S. 3240, the Farm Bill, offered by [Sen. Moran] that will make certain rural communities throughout Kansas remain eligible for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development loan and grant programs. In the absence of this amendment, nearly 1,000 rural communities across the country would have become ineligible for USDA funds due to small increases in population identified by the recent 2010 Census. USDA Rural Development programs help provide affordable single and multi-family housing, finance water and waste loans and grants, and support essential community facilities like hospitals and schools.”

My interpretation: once you're "rural", you're always "rural".  Increasing population would seem to say the RD programs are working, so when do you declare success and leave?  (Granted, the fact Sen. Moran is a conservative is one reason for me to ding him for hypocrisy.)

Mobile Offices for USDA?

Back in the mid-90's, when the Service Center project was under Greg Carnill, one of the proposals coming from RD was to have mobile offices.  That was seen as a way to reach out to underserved areas (I think especially heavily Latino areas and reservations where language might be a problem). I thought of that when I saw this piece on VA's mobile Vetcenters.

Building Infrastructure: Cooperatives and the REA

Life on a Colorado Farm has a post on how parts of rural Colorado were electrified.  Clue: it took cooperation, a cooperative, and the government to do it.

How'd That Work Out for the Rural Areas: FDR in 1933

Matt Yglesias quotes from FDR's inaugural, in the context of whether Obama is a good leader, but I'm interested in this one sentence:

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.

That belief has a long history, and it carries on today, when some in the food movement argue for revivifying rural areas. The New Deal tried, they even had a Resettlement Administration, bits and pieces of which ended up in the Farmers Home Administration and now FSA, but it didn't work as they thought it should.  I think the bottom line is: most rural areas (measured in area) in which farming is the main occupation will continue to lose population for the foreseeable future. I note today there's a Mid-Atlantic exposition/conference on precision agriculture coming up; it's the first one.  If they can do precision agriculture in this area, that further cuts the need for labor and increases the need for capital, all of which means a further expansion of the size of farms and a further cut in farm population.

Ho Hum, A White House Rural Council

From the USDA blog, an announcement of a cross-cabinet council to focus on rural matters.  The chances of this accomplishing anything significant: zilch.

The "name" members are all cabinet officers, who are much too busy doing their day jobs to spend any real time or effort, much less money, on this.  The people who will actually attend the meetings, after the first one, are assistants to the  deputy assistant under secretary, someone whose time is not valuable. 

NASCOE Lobbying Generates Comments

From USDA's summary of steps taken to improve regulations, this summary of comments received (over 2,000)

The vast majority of comments referenced USDA’s potential review of process improvements that could be achieved through the consolidation of information required to participate in farm programs administered by the Farm Service Agency and the Federal Crop Insurance Program, identified as the Acreage-Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative (ACRSI). Many of these comments responded to suggestions from various commenters that the Farm Service Agency (FSA) take over delivery of the Federal crop insurance program or other administrative functions of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Risk Management Agency (RMA). ACRSI is an initiative aimed at reducing the reporting burden on USDA customers. By consolidating acreage reporting dates, linking crop codes, and sharing producer information across agencies producers will be able to provide acreage data at their first point of contact with USDA whether that be with FSA, NRCS, or their private sector crop insurance agent. Each individual agency will still be required to collect information from producers that is specific to their program(s); however, common information will only need to be collected once. This initiative will minimize the paperwork burden on producers and minimize the number of trips they need to make to a USDA office.

When Is an Earmark an Earnmark

The Sustainable Ag Coalition believes that ATTRA lost its funding because Congress thought it was an earmark:

One very distressing casualty of the continuing series of Continuing Resolutions that are keeping the government open but cutting funding week by week is the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, known as ATTRA.  ATTRA’s $2.8 million was cut entirely in H.R. 1, the House-passed full-year Continuing Resolution from mid-February and that proposed program termination was unfortunately including among the $6 billion in cuts adopted by Congress this week in the new short-term Continuing Resolution keeping the government operating through April 8.
The justification for cutting ATTRA appears to be a misperception that it is an earmark.  Indeed, like earmarks, many Senators and Members of Congress request funding for ATTRA every year, as they do for many programs.  However, unlike earmarks for projects in specific congressional districts, ATTRA is a nationwide program, authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill, and it has been included in presidential budgets through many administrations over several decades. 

 What they don't mention is that the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service is not a federal agency, as the name might imply (and I first thought).  It's the outcome of a cooperative agreement with the Rural Development Service--in other words federal money provided to a cooperative.  Here's the general blurb from RD:

We have over 80 years of experience working with the cooperative sector and remain the only federal agency charged with that responsibility. USDA Rural Development has been providing support to cooperatives since the Cooperative Marketing Act of 1926, promoting the knowledge of cooperative principles and practices as well as collecting statistics on cooperative activities. The Cooperative Program provides assistance for rural residents interested in forming new cooperatives and administers programs that fund value-added producer grants, rural cooperative development centers, and small socially-disadvantaged producers.
We also provide resources to local cooperatives to support a department-wide effort known as, 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food'. This initiative, led by Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan puts an increased emphasis on regional food systems, which will have direct and significant benefits to rural communities. Lear [sic] more here:

Now if the appropriation is specifically for that cooperative agreement, it comes pretty close in my mind to an earmark. If RD is given a lump sum of money for cooperative agreements and decides to give $2.8 million to ATTRA, then it's not.

RD Takes a Hit

Rural Development loses $29 million in broadband funds in the 2-week Republican/Democrat budget deal. What's worse is the implicit criticism from both sides of the agency's capabilities.