Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991                   TAG: 9104210069
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHAT FARM OFFICES DO

Almost 90 percent of USDA's 110,000 full-time employees work outside Washington.

In the government's 1989 operating year, the department's top four field agencies spent roughly $2.4 billion and 63,000 staff years to administer their programs through more than 11,000 county offices nationwide.

"These expenditures translate into about $1,100 in federal administrative costs per farm, using USDA's definition of a farm as having sales of $1,000 or more," the General Accounting Office says.

The USDA's top four field agencies are:

The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. This agency administers programs for commodity loans and price supports for farmers; commodity purchases from farmers and processors; land-use programs, such as acreage reduction, crop land set-aside programs; and emergency assistance programs.

The Soil Conservation Service, which supervises a national soil and water conservation program in cooperation with other federal, state and local government agencies. The agency helps farmers develop conservation plans required by the federal farm bill and administers fertilizer runoff and erosion control programs that, in Virginia, have a direct impact on the quality of the water running into the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways.

The Farmers Home Administration. This agency provides credit at reasonable rates and terms to farmers and other rural people who cannot get it from other sources. The FmHA provided more than $103 million in loans and grants for farming, housing, community facilities and business development in Virginia during fiscal year 1990.

Recent federal legislation, however, takes rural economic development programs away from the FmHA and gives them to a new agency.

The Extension Service, whose primary mission is education. It is a partnership of federal, state and local governments. Because of this unique funding partnership, the Extension Service is not included in proposed schemes to create a single farm agency by merging other USDA field agencies.

The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service and Soil Conservation Service have offices in 85 percent of the nation's 3,150 counties. Farmers Home has offices in roughly 60 percent of the counties and the Cooperative Extension Service, an agency whose mission is education, has offices in nearly all U.S. counties.

The Agriculture Department had a $52 billion budget in 1989.