USDA OUTLOOK: 2019
USDA OUTLOOK: 2019 BY CRAIG COLLINS
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USDA’s 62,000 employees were furloughed during the government shutdown. On Jan. 9, the Congressional Research Service reported that while select USDA functions continued after the shutdown, many others had stopped, including “data collection and analysis that inform the commodity markets, development of regulations to implement the new farm bill ... completing the Administration’s ‘trade aid’ payments, processing and funding farm loans and guarantees, rural development loan and grant programs ... agricultural research programs and grants, and many international assistance programs.” The shutdown continued past Jan. 15, the deadline for farmers harmed by the administration’s trade war to apply for relief payments – leaving many in the lurch. John Heisdorffer, an Iowa farmer and president of the American Soybean Association, said the shutdown couldn’t have come at a worse time for farmers already suffering adverse market conditions. “Farmers rely on their county officers to get commodity loans through the CCC [Commodity Credit Corporation],” he said during the shutdown. “Those offices are shut down now. They cannot get loans. If things get bad enough and they can’t get a loan through their normal lender, the FHA – the Farmers Home Administration – can’t step in. Those offices are also shut down. So it’s really putting farmers in a bind.” On Jan. 16, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced that, in an effort “to minimize the impact of the partial federal funding lapse on America’s
Above: A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) loan officer talks with Rick Davis Farms owner Rick Davis in one of his cotton fields outside of Quitman, Georgia. FSA offices were closed for much of the government shutdown, leaving producers without access to loans.
PHOTO BY PRESTON KERES
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he U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was among several federal institutions faced with uncertainty at the end of 2018, when an impasse over the $5.7 billion in border-wall funding President Donald Trump demanded left several executive branch departments unfunded – at least in part – and triggered a 35-day partial government shutdown. By the time of the shutdown, USDA and several other departments were being funded not through the normal appropriations process, but through continuing resolutions – stopgap measures that generally sustain existing funding levels – that expired on Dec. 21. Further complicating the picture for USDA is the fact that its programs are funded through separate measures: Benefit programs mandated by law, such as crop insurance, nutrition assistance (“food stamps”), and conservation and commodity programs, are funded through farm bills, typically passed at fiveyear intervals; the most recent farm bill, the $867 billion Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, was signed into law by Trump on Dec. 20, 2018. The operating costs associated with administering those programs, however, along with discretionary spending on programs such as research and the department’s rural broadband initiative, are funded through normal budget appropriations. And with no agriculture appropriation bill signed by the president by the time the continuing resolutions expired in late December, the USDA and those who rely upon it felt the effect. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, more than two-thirds of
