By Robert Pore
robert.pore@theindependent.com

In December, the Nebraska Farm Service Agency State Executive Director Milton Rogers said FSA office closings included Banner, Boyd, Dakota, Deuel, Frontier, Burwell District (Garfield, Loup and Wheeler counties), Greeley, Hitchcock, Sherman and Thedford District (Thomas, Grant, Hooker and Blaine counties).

Former U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, who is now running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, authorized the closings.

Dennis Kuhlengel, NAFEC president, is urging the conferees to adopt the "better defined" language that is contained in the Senate Farm Bill version.

In the letter, NAFEC said the Senate version does not end protection from FSA county office closings after only one year.

To better address the issue, NAFEC also asked that the conferees include language to specify that: "County offices that are located not more than 20 miles from another county office may be exempted from closure" and 20 miles should be better defined such as: "not more than 20 miles by U.S. highway or commonly traveled blacktopped commercial roads."

Kuhlengel said there are cases in which physical boundaries cause the distance by road to be much greater than a straight line measure, or the travel time to be up to an hour to travel the 20 miles.

According to the letter: "In some cases, a county office has been closed because of distance without taking into account the very crooked steep mountainous roads that triple average travel time. The same could be true of forcing farmers to travel into congested urban areas with heavy traffic."

NAFEC is an organization composed of and led by farmers, nominated and elected by farmers, and serving all farmers in each of their FSA county offices.

In December, Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., said 3rd District farmers have been hurt by the closing of area Farm Service Agency offices.

"These FSA offices are tremendously important," Smith said. "It had been my sincere hope we could have found a way to delay these closures, at least until Congress could complete its work on the reauthorization of the Farm Bill. Now producers in my district could face even more uncertainty as these offices relocate and we go into the new year with the Farm Bill still unfinished."

Of the 10 FSA offices closing today, nine are in the 3rd District. Smith co-sponsored legislation delaying the closures for one year, along with the language in the House version of the Farm Bill.