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

Kent Politsch, an FSA spokesman, explains that the objective of the FSA itself and the USDA in general is to reduce the regulatory reporting burden on farmers, who now must provide reports and deal with three separate agencies within the USDA.

But representatives of independent agents remain concerned.

Jennifer McPhillips, IIABA senior director of federal government affairs, argues, "Independent agents have grown the federal crop program exponentially over the past quarter-century, and it is imperative to both farmers and the future of the agriculture industry that agents remain the sole sales force of the program."

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

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

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

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

He contends that the union, the National Association of FSA County Employees, has asked its members in a bulletin to contact USDA and tell them that "…FSA of the USDA should be the sole designated entity to take the acreage reports for all USDA purposes."

Becker says the bulletin also argues that "agents have a motive for selling policies that are based upon acreages" and that "it does not make sense to pay a crop-insurance agent to take the report on insured crops and have FSA take acreage reports on all other crops."