“Fort Knox is a treasure trove – the nation’s gold reserves are stored and guarded there.  It is one of the most secure locations in the world for good reason: to keep the public away from Uncle Sam’s stash of more than $6 billion in gold.

 

But the local offices of the Farm Service Administration should not be held in the same light.  These offices are the physical connection between our farmers and ranchers and the government programs designed to help them with their loans, get them payments and swiftly connect them to emergency programs.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced plans to close an estimated 30 FSA offices in Missouri and hundreds more nationwide.

 

The farmers’ office should not be treated like Fort Knox, and the producers in the Eighth
Congressional District, our U.S. Senators and I are all up in arms. 

 

The point of these programs and these offices is to keep producers in touch with the complicated programs that are designed to keep them above water, as well as to provide assistance with the paperwork that accompanies those programs.  Some of our producers may make 30, 40, or even 50 trips to their county FSA office in a year.  Consolidating offices will increase the burden on the farmer to travel, create waits for the proper staff and reduce person-to-person contact overall.  In times of drought, disaster, and low yields, we cannot afford to increase the distance between our producers and the offices designated to help them get through tough times.

 

It is important to remember that the well-being of our producers is directly linked to the financial health of every business in rural America.  Our farmers and ranchers are the customers who keep implement dealers, banks, seed companies and transporters in business.  Rural America relies on these transactions at a local level, and taking the FSA office out of the equation can only mean hardship for rural economies.

 

The argument from the bureaucrats is cost savings, but I haven’t seen one acre of farmland in Washington DC yet.  The bean counters see FSA offices in terms of the expenditures on a balance sheet, and not in terms of people.  In their estimation, fewer offices equals more efficient government. 

 

I care a lot more about what the bean grower thinks than what the bean counter does.

 

To the bean grower, and every other producer in Southern Missouri, this arrangement of “more efficient government” would mean less efficient farming.  I am all for smaller government, but I cannot support a plan that throws the baby out with the bath water.  The FSA plan would create inefficiencies far greater than the ones it would solve. 

 

Efficient government is important to me, as a guardian of the taxpayers’ money.  The best ways to create new efficiencies are to streamline programs, to increase proper oversight and to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.  We cannot make Medicare more efficient by reducing the number of qualified doctors in the program.  Neither should we bring this approach to the services we render to the hardworking farmers and ranchers in Southern Missouri, and across America. 

 

Right now, as our farmers begin to harvest the fields they have tended all summer long, we can see them working early and late.  The lights of their combines glow until long after we get home from work.  The extra time to travel two counties to an FSA office during this critical season is especially unnecessary for our farmers, when there could still be an office in their town just down the highway.

 

We have a message for the Washington bureaucrats who dreamed up this idea: let’s not treat the FSA like Fort Knox.  They’re not the same.”