FSA will stay open until the cows come home"



NEW SCOTLAND — As the local federal Farm Service Agency is slated to merge with another county office, legislation that is pending in Congress is keeping it from closing its doors.

The Albany County FSA is slated to merge with the office in Schoharie, which serves Schoharie and Schenectady counties. However, the federal Farm Bill has not yet been approved by lawmakers and language in the bill is keeping the office open.
"I think a lot of our producers and farmers are relieved that it was put on hold," said Thomas Della Rocco, the executive director of the FSA’s Albany County and Schoharie offices.

The FSA has 43 county offices in New York State and over 2,300 offices in the continental United States. The office manages farm commodity, credit, conservation, disaster, and loan programs as dictated by Congress.

Della Rocco said language in the federal budget and versions of the proposed Farm Bill before the Senate and House of Representatives puts a hold on any offices being closed. The version of the Farm Bill before the Senate, he said, contains language that puts any closures on hold, and the version before the House of Representatives, Della Rocco said, places a one-year moratorium on any closures.
"I’m happy about it, obviously. I’m a proponent of it staying open," said Jim Abbruzzese, whose family owns Altamont Orchards; he chairs the Albany County FSA committee, elected to the post by other farmers.
Abbruzzese called the office remaining open "a short-term fix."
"I would love to see the closures stop and would like it to be in the Farm Bill," said Abbruzzese. He differentiated between the federal budget — which only covers one year — from the Farm Bill, which governs agriculture for five years.
"We’re good to go for awhile," said Abbruzzese.

History

Last year, a committee led by Brymer Humphreys, the state’s executive director of the Farm Service Agency, was charged with increasing efficiencies within the FSA.

The committee’s charge dates back to January of 2006, when Teresa Lasseter, the FSA’s national administrator, met with executive directors of states to determine local needs and concerns of individual states rather than Washington, D.C. dictating what each state must do, Kent Politsch, a spokesman for the FSA, said earlier.

While considering eight offices throughout the state to close or merge with an FSA office nearby, Humphreys’s committee met with each affected community and held public hearings as part of the process. After holding hearings, the committee determined three county offices — including the one in Albany County — would close.

Had the committee’s plan been approved, the offices affected would have had 120 days to close.

At a public hearing in September at the William Rice Jr. Extension Center in New Scotland — the building where the Albany County FSA office is housed — many area farmers and government officials spoke against consolidation. No members in the audience favored a merger of the Schoharie and Albany county sites.

Della Rocco said he believes the public hearings raised public awareness and led to Congressman Michael McNulty and State Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton taking further action and changing wording in the legislation.

Clinton had introduced legislation last summer to block the closure of FSA offices as well as the closures of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service and Rural Development offices in the state and throughout the nation.