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Somebody told me a "good news – bad news" joke about agriculture producers wishing to apply for disaster assistance, only I’m not laughing. The good news was that the USDA is now accepting applications for disaster assistance at your neighborhood Farm Service Agency (FSA) office. The bad news is that ten neighborhood FSA offices in Nebraska are scheduled to close December 8, 2007.
This is a real slap in the face to producers who are in need of help because all ten FSA offices scheduled to close are in counties where there were disaster declarations in at least one of the past three years which are the years covered by the assistance. To make matters worse, the USDA, under the direction of then Secretary Mike Johanns, knew that producers in those counties would be seeking help when they made the decision last summer to take away the best resource for receiving that help and close the FSA offices.
That's a dirty trick to play on producers who were hit by drought, excessive heat, high winds, hail, insects, lightning, winter storms, and other disasters declared in Banner, Boyd, Dakota, Deuel, Frontier, Garfield, Greeley, Hitchcock, Sherman and Thomas counties.
Instead of driving 10 or 15 miles to file their disaster aid application, producers will now have to drive 60 or 70 miles to find another FSA office that remains open. This is not just an inconvenience… it’s an expensive inconvenience because of today’s high gas prices and will save the USDA only a relatively small amount of money, maybe $100,000 per office.
I have always believed that government services should be convenient to obtain. Agriculture producers should be able to find assistance as close to their homes as possible. Nebraska is a large agricultural producing state and the USDA should allocate resources accordingly.
Instead, agriculture producers and small communities in Nebraska are being told that they will shoulder a bigger burden than other segments of the population. What is being offered here is the illusion of budgetary savings and at a tremendous cost to farmers and ranchers and small communities alike. The fact is that savings will be negligible and the number of staff will remain the same. The only thing that will change is the new burden put on Nebraska producers.
It is still possible to stop the closings of the ten FSA offices in Nebraska. My hope is that we can stop the offices from closing if the Senate passes the farm bill. Only five more votes are needed in order to proceed to consideration.
Farmers, ranchers, agri-businesses, and other interested parties should write to their United States Senators urging them to support the farm bill, which is now officially known as the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007.
I have been urging the name change for several years in order to show that the bill is about more than food production; that it is important in America’s battle for energy independence and the need to build the renewable fuels industry. Yes, there’s more to the bill than just blocking the FSA office closings.
The bill is good for America. Good for farmers, ranchers, agri-businesses, and good for Nebraska's Number One industry, agriculture. It is important that we get it passed as soon as possible.
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