FSA

The Farm Service Agency's spokesperson Candy Moore sent me a press release that I had to call her about. "Hi David, how are you? I'm all right except you can't just send out a press release saying...FSA's 29 county offices in Idaho began accepting applications to serve on County Office Committees (COC) today. What does that mean? (Laughter) Does that mean that farmers can become politicians and then the next thing you know they're running for president, which wouldn't be a bad thing. County Office Committees Has been around for a long time. Every year they have elections for specific local administrative area. They call them LAA's so there is an LAA in each county that is up for election each year. They do it elect local producers to this county office committee and they make decisions on things that come up within that county. If there is a conservation program that needs to be approved, they have to approve some of the local farm storage facility loans, all kinds of things. Anything FSA farm programs deal with, things in the farm bill that may need to have a determination by committee, these producers make those decisions. Applications are accepted for anybody living in the LAA that qualifies. In order to qualify, they have to participate in an FSA program, they have to be eligible to vote meaning over 18, no felonies, the basic eligibility rules, as I said, the most important is to have participated in FSA programs. That can mean having an FSA loan, being part of the ACRE program, be part of the milk program. Nomination forms are available on the website.