Stop Cuts to Risk Management Agency Community Outreach Program
May 28, 2008
The popular and productive Risk Management Agency Community Outreach Partnership Program faces a severe cut that threatens the funding not only of this year's (FY 09) partnership grants currently under review at the Department, but also future grants for the life of the 2008 Farm Bill.
A few weeks ago, upon the passage of the Farm Bill conference report, Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer commented, the bill passed today is a farm bill in name only. It does not target help for the farmers who really need it. Yet as the Administration seeks to implement a bill that contained many gains for socially disadvantaged farmers, its rush to gut this critical program in fact seriously undermines assistance for those farmers who really need it.
This funding cut comes as the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) moves rapidly to implement Farm Bill provisions in Section 12024. The section requires some reductions (from $20 million to $12.5 million) in risk management research, education and outreach programs and provides discretion to, but does not require, RMA to use a portion of the funds for information technology and compliance.
This funding cut affects several programs included in this funding pool: Research and Development Agreements, Non-Insurance Risk Management Partnerships, Risk Management and Crop Insurance Education Partnerships, and Community Outreach and Assistance Partnerships. A list of awardees for 2007 is available here: http://www.rma.usda.gov/news/2007/09/2007outreach.pdf. Past awardees (through 2002) are linked here: http://www.rma.usda.gov/aboutrma/agreements/archive.html
The President's budget for 2009 specified that the $5 million for information technology should come from the portion of the overall funding pool that funds insurance companies. The language included in the farm bill leaves more discretion to the agency to move funds as it sees fit. A portion of report language that expressed a preference from Congress that funding for the Community Outreach and Partnership Program be maintained was removed on the last day the Farm Bill was open to changes.
Now, RMA has indicated that it will make deep cuts in the Community Outreach and Partnership Program beginning with grants currently being reviewed. The funds available would be reduced from the $8.3 million committed last year to perhaps as little as $2 or $2.5 million. Decisions on these cuts may be made within the coming week.
RMA community outreach activities provide information and training to women, limited resource, socially disadvantaged and other traditionally under served producers, and have proven highly effective in reaching traditionally underserved communities with the program information and technical assistance necessary to equally access and participate in all RMA programs and activities.
The RMA Community Outreach Partnership Program, which awarded 57 grants in 36 states in 2007, is important because it:
- Targets assistance to the many socially disadvantaged specialty crop producers - who comprise some 12% of all specialty crop producers - that are not well-supported by other USDA programs
- Has been a critical and consistent provider of outreach on risk management to the socially disadvantaged community when other USDA program agencies fail to deliver services or reach these producers
- Supports a wide range of activities aimed to provide technical assistance, capacity-building, and risk reduction to individual producers who lack access to other forms of risk protection
- Partners with community-based organizations, helping to build capacity of local organizations to provide technical assistance and increasing local knowledge of USDA programs
- Helps individual farmers and ranchers reduce on-farm risk, thereby helping to guarantee the long-term viability of small and mid-sized producers
- Builds trust between socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and the USDA
- Is essential to implementing the gains for socially disadvantaged producers authorized in the 2008 Food, Conservation, and Energy Act
What to do:
Before June 6, contact the Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer and Risk Management Agency Administrator Eldon Gould.
Urge them to remember their commitment to a Farm Bill that targets help to the farmers who need it most by protecting the RMA Risk Management Community Outreach Partnership Program.
Tell them why you support maintaining funding at current levels rather than take funding reductions and transfers to information technology from one of the Department's most popular and effective programs.
Let them know why the program is important to your community.
You can contact them by email or by phone:
Ed Schafer, Secretary
US Department of Agriculture
AgSec@usda.gov
202-720-3631
Eldon Gould, Administrator
USDA Risk Management Agency
eldon.gould@usda.gov
202-690-2803
Send copies of your messages to the Secretary and the Administrator to your member of Congress. Urge them to contact the Secretary as well to demonstrate their support of this program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. Phone or email is best; you can find contact information online here: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cdirectory/index.html, or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Mail should be directed to local, rather than DC, offices.
Additional Information About the Need for RMA Outreach Programs
A financial record keeping training program, developed by the Rural Coalition in conjunction with RMA and many project partners, has trained thousands of beginning, socially disadvantaged, and underserved producers in planning, budgeting, and keeping records needed to file an IRS Schedule F or complete USDA applications. This training is critically important to address the long-term structural impact of discrimination within USDA programs and outreach and extension services.
Socially disadvantaged producers, who have often been effectively excluded from access to USDA programs, have fewer incentives and far less support and assistance to prepare increasingly complex financial and other records required for program access, and to meet marketing requirements. According to a 2005 survey conducted by RC with its partners, of 1,142 diverse record keeping training participants in 19 states, only 4.7 percent of producers had a risk management plan for their farming enterprise. While 42.7 percent of producers indicated that they use a tax preparer, only 18.6 percent filed an IRS Schedule F, which is necessary to become eligible for USDA farm program participation and for crop insurance.
Producers lack both information about and access to USDA programs. Prior to the training, 28 percent of participants had applied for a USDA loan. Of those, 91.3 percent had been denied a loan from USDA. Most of the respondents (84.6 percent) had never purchased crop insurance, and only slightly over 1/3 of all respondents were aware of the Risk Management Agency. The record keeping training has prepare socially disadvantaged producers to meet USDA standards for program participation, to begin to meet new marketing requirements such as Good Agricultural Practices, and has also better prepared producers to employ additional methods limiting their risk.
RMA Community Outreach and Partnership Programs annually has funded a diverse range of community based organizations and educational institutions working with socially disadvantaged and other small farmers and ranchers, a small sample of which include:
- Oklahoma Black Historical Research Project Inc.'s workshops to train small and socially disadvantaged farmers in plasticulture to minimize crop production risks and boost production and incomes.
- Texas/Mexico Border Coalition's risk management training and outreach in a 56-county border-region area of Texas and New Mexico.
- National Hmong American Farmers, Inc.'s outreach, information, assistance and risk management training to Hmong, Latino, and women producers.
- Community Food Security Coalition's partnership building between Food Policy Councils and limited resource producers.
- Federation of Southern Cooperatives' project to assist producers in managing their legal risks.
- National Immigrant Farming Initiative's project to improve access to risk management strategies and agricultural support systems for 400 underserved producers.
- Operation Spring Plant, Inc.'s Alternative Fuel Systems for Sustainability of Small Farms Project, which seeks to reach underserved farmers and communities through demonstrations of the art and science of biodiesel production.
- Coastal Enterprises Inc.'s training and resources for recent immigrant farmers in Maine and New Hampshire.
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