Too many hands down on the farm? - government subsidies

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 4, 1994 | by Russell Shaw

Montgomery County, Texas, is another increasingly urban jurisdiction. A short drive north of Houston, the county's population has grown to 182,000 people. For the most part, residents are more likely to spend their mornings driving to one of Houston's employment centers than in a combine harvesting grain on the back 40. Less than 1 percent of formerly rural Montgomery's population lives on farms. In 1992, the ASCS field office wrote only 17 checks - mostly for planting trees or grass to forestall erosion.

But don't mention the word pork to Dorothy Steele, director of the Montgomery County ASCS office. "We have mostly cattle ranches and some wool and mohair producers, too. We are still serving the farmers," Steele says. Patronage levels would have been higher the last two years, she says, but heavy rains prevented farmers from getting their crops in the ground.

Another frequent argument keep local ASCS offices in suburbanizing counties: Since high-growth counties often need major infrastructure improvements such as roads and sewerage, property taxes often are raised to meet the demands, putting extra financial pressure on farmers. If the tax burden comes at the same time as a market downturn or bad weather, farmers may not survive and could be forced to sell their farms or face foreclosure. Local ASCS officers are familiar with the circumstances and are more likely to find alternatives for farmers than would agents from distant counties.

"Some people here are still trying to hang on to their farms, but they already are having to fight the county tooth and nail with taxes," says Shirley Clendenin, director of the ASCS office in Gwinnett County. "We help them what little bit we can."

Clendenin operates her office on a $46,000 annual budget, and she is concerned that consolidation might mean unemployment. "It's kind of a touchy situation from a personal standpoint," she says.

But what about farmers? The main voice for farmers in the United States, the American Farm Bureau Federation represents nearly 4 million members. As a result of its large membership, the bureau lobbies on the state and national levels to maintain farm services.

The bureau generally speaks as a chorus. Today, the tone of the politically powerful federation seems to be that some consolidation is inevitable, but it should be carefully managed.

"We have said we would support efficiency," says Robert Nooter, director of governmental relations for the Farm Bureau. "If that means closing ASCS offices, as we presume is the case, there should be a careful examination of how to select those offices that can be merged without creating a severe disruption to the clientele in that area."

Nooter is concerned that the heat applied against closure of ASCS and other USDA offices will come at the local level, once the candidate sites are disclosed later this year. "There's no doubt that when an office is threatened with closing, people in the local area will become excited and tend to attack members of Congress to prevent that from happening," he admits. "The word efficiency is on everybody's lips, but what we might hear from some people is, in effect, |Close some of the offices, but don't close mine.'"