09/29/05 FSA may close a dozen Idaho offices

USDA is talking about closing more than 700 Farm Service Agency offices nationwide. In Idaho twelve of the current 35 FSA offices could be closed says state director Wayne Hammon. HAMMON "I'll be working with farmers and ranchers from across the state through the county committees and my employees to evaluate each one of the 35 offices to determine where we can improve service by doing a consolidation." Hammon says there are two criteria to consider in office closings. HAMMON "How do we do it that we help farmers not hurt them. We don't want to send somebody 80 miles to stand in line. We want to keep the distances as close together as we can so that we can provide better service. Secondly how do we help our employees? A lot of these people who work for USDA are farmers themselves or in many cases farm wives who have a job in town and so between the two guiding principles I hope we can come up with twelve that make sense." Closing offices in Idaho and across the nation will obviously save the government millions and millions of dollars in rent alone. There are three Idaho offices with only one employee, so you'd think they'd be the first to go but not so fast. More about that tomorrow. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott