Thousand Hired to Help with Farm Law

June 10, 2002

Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has authorized the hiring of an additional 1,000 employees to aid county offices throughout the country expedite implementation of the new farm law. This first round of staffing will account for about 40% of the additional employment needed to implement the new law.

The new farm law contained $55 million for farm bill implementation. The Bush administration had requested $110 million because the new law contains extensive modifications to existing laws, creates many new programs, and has a very aggressive implementation timeline.

Putting the programs of the new law into place, most of which are applicable to the 2002 crops, significantly increases the workload of the Farm Service Agency (FSA), which had been steadily reducing staff since the enactment of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, according to USDA.

A newly completed workload assessment for the new law provides estimates of the additional staff required at the county offices, Washington headquarters, and other field offices for timely implementation of the new law. Based on this assessment, the agency is hiring the first group of approximately 1,000 temporary employees, most for local FSA offices in parts of the country where the expanded workload will be the greatest.