County committees: Staffing levels are low

The National Association of Farmer-elected Committees said Wednesday that its members disagree with Trump administration officials’ statements that the speedy delivery of Farmer Bridge assistance payments indicates adequate Farm Service Agency county staffing levels, and urged farmers and ranchers to tell their representatives in Congress that staffing levels need to be increased.

“NAFEC is concerned that the administration is focused on cutting local staff in the country side, while maintaining staffing at the national level,” the group said in a news release.

NAFEC Executive Vice President Craig Turner said, “Keeping local staffing in our local communities is essential if we wish to maintain the level of service that has made FSA the Can Do Agency! You can be for certain, without additional staffing, producer service will be disrupted. Agriculture producers should all be concerned. Having our local office staffed to adequately serve our farming communities is at stake. The ability to apply in person with a local staff member is at stake. NAFEC urges all agriculture producers to contact your congressional leaders and requests FSA County office staffing levels be increased to adequate levels!”

NAFEC members — farmers and ranchers who have been elected to the committees to oversee the county offices that deliver farm benefits — praised the staff for delivering the most recent payments quickly but noted that “thousands of hours of work had already been completed by FSA county staff throughout the year.”

FSA county staff “know first-hand just how important it is to get program benefits to their customers, which is why they stay late off the clock, and work to get the job done,” NAFEC said. “The software, while beneficial, did not magically identify all the acres of crops needed to determine the payment rates. The beneficial software did not magically determine who was, or was not, an eligible farmer to receive payment, where to send the payments by producer account, or how to process and review the payments to ensure correctness. These actions were all performed throughout the year by FSA county office staff, many of whom have now taken early retirements and buyouts under the administration’s initiative to reduce local staffing across the nation.”