The MIDAS Project team sat down with FSA Administrator, Juan Garcia, to discuss his priorities, FSA, and MIDAS.
- Juan Garcia
Administrator
Farm Service Agency
1. What are your top three priorities?
Our core mission is always our top priority, which is to provide a safety net of programs and farm credit for American farmers and ranchers. Through these efforts, FSA plays an important role in maintaining the viability of farm-related businesses, and supporting the strong economic standing of rural America. That means continuing to deliver the 2008
Farm Bill programs that are still underway, such as the 2011 SURE program. The signup for this program is just around the corner and in many states will create a major workload due to the various disaster events in 2011. Additionally, divisions such as Commodity Operations continue their good work to bring the bounty of American farms to international food aid partners and USDA feeding programs, work that is often less celebrated but very important, and always ongoing.
The second priority is to prepare to implement a Food, Farm and Jobs bill as soon as it’s passed by Congress. Disaster programs and loans programs in particular will be in demand due to this year’s severe drought, so we must be ready to assist producers in these areas and hit the ground running.
In order to maintain the high level of service for FSA customers it is of vital importance to find ways to make the best use of our agency’s fiscal allocation. During the 2012 fiscal year, field, state, and headquarters employees have done an outstanding job of maintaining services with diminished budgets, but it has come at a price. It is important that employees know we continually assess our fiscal resources and search for innovative ways to maintain sustainability in employment and in providing employees with the resources they need to conduct business the way it should be conducted.
2. What are the important FSA accomplishments you want to highlight?
There are so many accomplishments worth noting. FSA employees completed signup of the DCP and ACRE programs even though the signup period was late in getting started. At the same time, employees worked with producers to process 2010 SURE applications and complete 2012 acreage reports. On top of that, CRP signup was underway, along with ongoing farm loan servicing activities – these past eight months have just been jam-packed with work. Our folks have done an outstanding job of getting it all done.
Most visible to the public have been our efforts to rally behind farmers and ranchers during this historic drought. FSA has taken great strides this summer to streamline our disaster designation process to get Secretarial Designations processed more rapidly; we’ve also added program flexibility to our conservation programs to alleviate the hay and pasture shortages faced by livestock producers. We will continue to exhaust all our resources and capabilities to ensure farmers and ranchers have the full support of USDA during this difficult time.
