Farm office will close in Sullivan County

Voices are raised against it

By TOM KANE

JEFFERSONVILLE, NY — Local farmers are going to go down swinging if the federal government closes the Farm Service Agency (FSA) office in Sullivan County.

About 100 local farmers and other supporters gathered at a public meeting on Monday, August 27 to protest the plan to close the existing FSA office in Liberty, NY. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is not providing sufficient budget to maintain current employee numbers in many local offices, FSA officials say.

In New York State, eight counties will lose their FSA offices and consolidate them with neighboring counties.

“We’re not cutting back on programs,” said New York FSA Executive Director Brymer Humphreys. “We’re not able to maintain the employee levels that we have had in the past. Farmers will have to travel to neighboring counties for their services. The budget is simply not there to continue as in the past.”

For Sullivan County farmers that will mean going to Middletown, NY in Orange County, an additional hour of traveling time for most local farmers, or to Walton, NY in Delaware County, a longer distance, depending on the location of the farms.

“This makes absolutely no sense at all,” said Chris Cunningham, Chairman of the Sullivan County Legislature. “Agriculture is growing in the county like never before. We have a federal REAP program that supports farmers. We are ready to open a slaughterhouse to serve farmers and we are planning a Liberty Agriculture Business Park. Both of these programs are tailored to bolster and expand the agriculture sector of the county.”

REAP is the Rural Economic Assistance Partnership which is funded by the federal government. REAP creates special business zones that give preferential status in the applications for USDA small business expansion, often giving low interest loans to participants in the zone.

Numerous speakers mentioned the fact that Sullivan County farms are within a two-hour drive to the biggest market in the nation and maybe in the world.

“There is a growing awareness that fresh foods are best,” said Sonja Hedlund of Callicoon. “New York City residents are demanding that their food come from local farms so they can better trust its quality. Farmers’ markets are growing in the area. We hear every day that foreign foods that come into the country are contaminated. This is not the time to cut back on these new trends in farming, like the creation of value-added products like cheese, organic milk, specialty vegetables and products like that. We need the federal government to support these trends, not discourage them.”

Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s representative Chris White read a letter by Hinchey to Humphreys, voicing his reasons for opposing the closing.

“The closing of the Liberty FSA office seems to contradict and undermine two ongoing USDA initiatives, the Sullivan–Warwarsing REAP Zone designation and Rural Development’s recent funding of the Liberty Agriculture Business Park, both of which are meant to support and expand the agriculture sector of Sullivan County. Furthermore, it is ironic that FSA is proposing to close the Sullivan County office due to its ‘declining agriculture base’ while at the same time USDA’s Rural Development agency is actively working with the county to develop and construct an Agriculture Business Park.”

Humphreys announced that the decision to close the office will be finalized at the end of September and will not be carried out until February of 2008.