NU Online News Service, May 24, 3:10 p.m.EDT

Agent associations are criticizing what they say are federalefforts to strip away crop-insurance servicing components fromtheir members.

Trade groups representing more than 18,000 crop agents acrossthe country are mobilizing their membership to retain the currentdelivery system for the federal crop program, with officials of theIndependent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA) and theNational Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA)launching a grassroots campaign.

The agent reaction was prompted by a U.S. Department ofAgriculture (USDA) request for information published in the FederalRegister on April 20 on how the agency can streamline some of theregulatory reporting burdens imposed on farmers.

Additionally, the trade group representing employees of the FarmService Agency (FSA)—one of two USDA agencies involved in thecrop-insurance program—proposed to the USDA and members of Congressthat money could be saved if it took over sales and servicing ofthe federally subsidized crop-insurance program, meaning the FSAwould be the single collection point for acreage reporting as wellas claims processing.

Kent Politsch, an FSA spokesman, explains that the objective ofthe FSA itself and the USDA in general is to reduce the regulatoryreporting burden on farmers, who now must provide reports and dealwith three separate agencies within the USDA.

But representatives of independent agents remain concerned.

Jennifer McPhillips, IIABA senior director of federal governmentaffairs, argues, "Independent agents have grown the federal cropprogram exponentially over the past quarter-century, and it isimperative to both farmers and the future of the agricultureindustry that agents remain the sole sales force of theprogram."

"Crop agents take on their responsibilities with a hands-onapproach and with an unmatched level of efficiency and accuracy inexecuting crop policies from start to finish," she says.

PIA officials say the objective of the FSA employees is "toexpel private-sector crop-insurance agents from a large swath ofthe federal crop-insurance program in an apparent effort toimmunize union members from budget cuts."

Mike Becker, PIA director of federal affairs, charges, "Withcontinued pressure to cut funding for farm programs, the FSAemployees' union has apparently decided it can protect its members'jobs by attacking private-sector crop-insurance agents and takingover agents' functions."

He says, "Moving certain parts of the crop-insurance programback to the FSA would set the program back 30 years, to a time whenthe program was inefficient, underutilized and administrative costswere significantly higher."

He contends that the union, the National Association of FSACounty Employees, has asked its members in a bulletin to contactUSDA and tell them that "…FSA of the USDA should be the soledesignated entity to take the acreage reports for all USDApurposes."

Becker says the bulletin also argues that "agents have a motivefor selling policies that are based upon acreages" and that "itdoes not make sense to pay a crop-insurance agent to take thereport on insured crops and have FSA take acreage reports on allother crops."