FCW reports on a White House deal about improving the nation's health and food situation. Reading between the lines it sounds as if some of the plans involve USDA and other agencies sharing data so they can improve participation in USDA food programs.
That may be mistaken, but 30 years ago there was a law restricting our ability to share data. I wonder whether that's changed or is now being ignored, or maybe privacy advocates no longer wish to oppose such deals?
As is usual to get big bills passed, there's everything in the IRA except the kitchen sink. The logic is classic log-rolling, everyone gets a piece of the action to boast about. Manchin and Sinema may get the headlines for their actions, and they may take credit back in WV and AZ for bringing home the bacon, and receive credit from interest groups in the form of donations, but I guarantee there's something in the bill for every Democrat.
Chris Clayton has the most detailed summary I've seen here.
Updated to add this excerpt:
"LOAN AID FOR DISTRESSED FARMERS
The bill also included just over $1 billion to FSA to replace the loan reimbursement for socially disadvantaged farmers, which ended in several lawsuits by white farmers after the provisions in the American Rescue Plan was passed in 2021.
The new provisions help borrowers "who are at risk" -- as determined by USDA -- as a "limited resource farmer or rancher" to pay 100% of their loans, up to $150,000. The loan repayment would be offset by any funds those farmers received under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) and reducing any payments under the Market Facilitation Program (MFP). For economically distressed borrowers are those who would be considered at least 90 days delinquent as of April 30, 2021, or 90 days delinquent as of the end of 2020. A farmer could also qualify if they farm in an area with at leas a 20% poverty rate, or in land held in trust by a Tribe or Native America.
Other farmers that would qualify for debt reduction include farmers in bankruptcy as of July 31, 2021, or receive a disaster set aside after Jan. 1, 2020, or has debt restructured after Jan. 1, 2020.
The bill also includes $750 million to provide farmers who experienced discrimination from USDA before Jan. 1, 2021. The bill would pay up to $500,000 to farmers who have proven to be discriminated against in USDA loan programs."
Don't know if I've blogged on this part of the Pigford case before, but here's a case which ends in pleas of guilty by four of the six defendants.
I found this table in the CRS report on farm bill basics interesting:
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
This report says the federal government doesn't get good marks for its services. But USDA is one of the highest ranking departments. Meanwhile I remember seeing the results of a survey of employee satisfaction within different agencies--IIRC USDA scored near the bottom.
Why? I'd suggest part of the answer might be this: farmers served by FSA seem usually to have close relationships with their local office--that was my impression early on in the 1970s and it seems to be continuing now, judging by the Facebook FSA group. But the local employees seem often to be unhappy with the national office; again I think it was true in the 70s and remains so now. (More accurately I think the employees are ambivalent, so they might easily voice discontent on a survey while being more balanced in a face-to-face.
Granted FSA is only a small part of USDA but the dynamic might well work for most of the agencies. My guess anyway.
GAO questions USDA's approaches to calculating MFP benefits. Too long, didn't read. (i.e., too complicated for an old man.)
That is reported by GovExec here: " The Veterans Affairs Department and Social Security Administration joined USDA in bringing up the bottom of the pack, with all three agencies holding vaccination rates under 88%."
I suspect the three agencies share a feature--extensive field staffs located in red states. I know from some posts on the Facebook page for the FSA employee group that whether or not to get the shots caused some angst. FSA for one is culturally conservative.
This Politico piece traces the history of the pension program for Civil War veterans (Union army) from very limited coverage to close to universal, ending with its last payment in 2020 to a widow. It argues that because the vets developed an effective lobby organization (Grand Army of the Republic) they were able to expand the program over the years. It goes on to cite the 20th century's Social Security and Medicare programs as similar cases where a program limited initially was expanded subsequently. All of this is in service to an argument that possibly the programs included in Biden's "Build Back Better" might have a similar destiny.
I don't quarrel with the writer's logic and hope for the expansion of BBB programs. I do offer the instance of USDA farm programs as another instance of the expansion of government programs, an instance which is even more noteworthy than his examples.
In the years since the Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed, programs have expanded to cover not only seven or eight field crops, but oilseeds, fruits and vegetables, specialty crops, aquaculture, apiculture, etc. The only crops whose programs have been reduced as of now are tobacco, peanuts, and naval stores.
While farmers.gov today just describes the preliminary injunctions, Politico reports that the administration let the deadline for appealing the (earliest?) injunction run out. Apparently USDA will continue to participate in hearings on whether or not there should be a final injunction.
Without absolutely no knowledge of such proceedings, I'd guess the judge(s) would be unlikely to change his mind.
Apparently the concern was there was a weak case which, if lost on appeal, would set a bad precedent for future court proceedings.
I repeat, no knowledge, but it did seem to me that the rationale for the program was weak--in its essentials it was paying off loans for people based on a history of not giving loans to people. The people with outstanding loans which would be forgiven were able to get past any past discriminatory hurdles in getting loans.
[Update--to give the rationale for the program, see this piece.]
[Second update--USDA's argument in court]
A number of articles on the issue of carbon credits--Politico, Civil Eats Modern Farmer, and others. Apparently the Biden administration is moving towards a system of establishing credits for farmers to capture carbon in the soil as part of the effort to minimize climate change. There's questions about definitions, about recognizing existing practices which capture carbon, etc. etc.
What strikes me is the likely impact on the USDA bureaucracy. I assume NRCS will be the lead agency in determining whether a given practice captures carbon, etc. and that data relating to credits will be tied into the GIS system.
I've not studied the issue, but I'm assuming the credits will have monetary value, small at first but increasing. I assume there might be a tie to existing farm programs. Consider the sod/swamp provisions which initiated in the 1985 farm bill with some programs over the years requiring compliance with the provisions as a condition of eligibility for payments. It's easy enough to imagine a requirement for some minimum of carbon capture being added to sod/swamp. I'm not sure these days how the FSA-NRCS collaboration on sod/swamp is working, but carbon capture might put new strains on the relationship, as well as the joint management of GIS data.
During my time NRCS had programs with their responsibilities under sod/swamp because they weren't used to being the "bad guy", making decisions which hurt farmers. The agency's culture was always being the good guy, teaching and helping farmers to do better. Will NRCS be up for carbon capture decisions?
A final concern is fraud. We like to believe producers are honest, and most are. But some aren't, and it's easy enough to imagine a fraudulent collaboration between a farmer and a USDA employee.
[Updated to add a link.]
The Livingston County News picks up a CQ piece on the appointment of Jewel Bronaugh as deputy secretary for USDA. It notes the criticism of Biden's nomination of Vilsack to return as secretary due to the Sherrod firing. Includes an endorsement from the VA Farm Bureau, and hopes from John Boyd.
FSA employees may be pleased that she was previously FSA state director in Virginia under the Obama administration.
[Updated: DTN piece on the same.]
There's been a number of pieces relating to black farmers recently. Some are keyed to the new administration and controversy over whether Vilsack is a good appointment. Several quote statements from different black farmer organizations. There seems to be more these days than there were when the original Pigford suit was filed.
I found this Politico piece interesting, especially including this paragraph:
Horne said her data shows there was a 57 percent decline in the number of Black farmers in North Carolina from 1954 to 1969, with the number dropping from 22,625 to 9,687. During the same period, farms operated by white farmers dropped from 201,819 to 106,275 — a 47 percent decline.
It's the first time I've seen a direct comparison of this kind. Maybe somewhere there's an economist who has gone a bit deeper into the statistics. What I'd particularly like to see is a breakdown by farm size. I suspect the distribution of black farms was proportionally weighted towards smaller farmers, and I suspect the farms which survived were proportionally weighted towards the larger farmers. If that was true, what should one conclude?
It seems if you can't keep them down on the farm, FSA has been directed to follow them to the city.
Apparently the 2018 farm bill included provisions for establishing county committees for urban areas. I missed the first announcement in August of the establishment of committees for these cities:
Successful Farming has a piece discussing this bill, introduced by Sens. Booker, Warren, and Gillibrand. Warren's statement of support is here. The legislative language is here . (I'm not sure the bill has actually been introduced--the draft language doesn't have a number and I can't find it at Congress.gov.) Mother Jones has an article on it.
It includes several reforms and programs, most of which are focused on black farmers (defined as American-born).
The biggest ask is a program to give qualified applicants of up to 160 acres of farmland, representing from $400,000 to $800,000 in value (using Farm Bureau's average farmland value of $4,100) at no cost.
Other provisions seem to oust OGC from civil rights matters, to put additional layer(s) of authority and/or review over the existing civil rights structure and the FSA county committees, and call for an extensive research and statistical work by ERS and NASS. In addition to the provisions on black farmers there are changes relating to packers and stockyards, conservation, and local markets.
There's an "Oversight Board" focused on current and future USDA/FSA operations and an "Equity Commission" focused on historical and structural issues to do a report within 2 years, and a Civil Rights Ombudsman.
I'm still trying to understand everything in this. Some things which struck me:
Mr. Wright has a Fortune magazine piece on black farmers and USDA discrimination in loans.
"Even today, plainly racist policies at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) frequently deny Black farmers the resources they need to keep their businesses afloat.
Creating a more equitable agriculture system will be impossible unless Black farmers have control over their own financial destinies. That goal will require a new credit and financing institution, owned and controlled by Black farmers and aimed squarely at supporting Black farmers, landowners, and their cooperatively owned businesses.
He asks that Congress waive loan repayments by farmers who got Pigford settlements and establish the new financing institution.
USDA and the administration are catching flak because of this:
The Agriculture Department last week began mandating that millions of boxes of surplus food for needy families include a letter from President Donald Trump claiming credit for the program.
I'm trying but failing to remember somewhat of a parallel. Secretary Bergland signed a letter which we sent out to farmers, perhaps to all active producers associated with a farm. This was, I think, in 1980, an election year. The subject was something related to crop insurance. I don't remember whether it was base on legislation or a policy decision, perhaps an expansion of the insurance program.. I do remember ASCS had been running a test of selling crop insurance, because Roy Cozart, who became DASCO when the Reagan administration came in, was working on putting FCIC directives into the ASCS system. That test was a failure.
IIRC we career bureaucrats, and possibly Roy, who was career but with political pull, raised an eyebrow on it. The differences between then and now: Jimmy Carter didn't sign the letter and I remember the content as being more informative and less propagandistic than the current letter.
USDA's DC area offices are working towards reopening, but catching flak from the employees according to this report.
