06/12/06 USDA releases database

USDA on Thursday released a database detailing the participation of the nation`s ag producers in farming entities. USDA made that move in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a number of groups - including the Environmental Working Group - which put out an on-line database of farm program payments ahead of the 2002 farm bill. Thomas Hofeller is Associate Administrator for Operations and Management with USDA`s Farm Service Agency. He says the data USDA released Thursday goes back roughly two decades - and is used by the Agency to determine producer eligibility for farm program payments under the three-entity rule. HOFELLER: This is a working file that FSA has been using for almost 20 years to conduct business and to determine payment eligibility. So there's been a rule in effect called the three entity rule throughout that whole period and this is the file we use to keep track of the eligibility under that rule. But USDA isn`t done disclosing farm program data under the Freedom of Information Act request filed by the EWG and other groups. Hofeller says USDA will release something called the "1614" (sixteen-fourteen) file in August. And he says that will show farm program payments received by individuals within farm entities. HOFELLER: It's an allotment of the benefits that have been received by entities that actually received the checks from us, down to the indirect and ultimate beneficiaries which are in the most case actual people that are inside those entities doing business through them. Hofeller says - once the Environmental Working Group has all the data they`ve requested from USDA through the Freedom of Information Act - their on-line database of farm program payment recipients could get a lot more specific. HOFELLER: They would be able to make public again the distribution of benefits down to the individuals as they've been paid through these entities. That would be the 1614 file. In the entity file that was released today they will get the structure of those entities so they will know how everybody relates to each other in those entities. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.