IG report can’t find value in USDA’s $4 billion ‘Beginning Farmers’ assistance program

A new report from the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Agriculture questions whether a $4 billion program that’s lasted through three decades has accomplished anything — anything at all.

The report focuses on the USDA’s “Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Programs,” a series of assistance measures provided through various sub-agencies of the USDA. Its findings are inconclusive, to say the least.

While the IG audit did acknowledge that the government had paid out billions of dollars to farmers, it concluded that there was no way to know whether the money had accomplished the program’s goals — largely because the program never established any goals beyond the one implied by its name. It’s a problem that dates all the way back to 1982, when an earlier Government Accountability Office report advised the USDA to come up with some way to measure the program’s effectiveness.

From the audit:

The Secretary of Agriculture has emphasized providing assistance to beginning farmers, and USDA agencies have provided significant financial resources and technical support to beginning farmers to assist in the establishment and sustainability of farming operations.

However, the Department had not developed an integrated and coordinated strategy to ensure that the Secretary’s direction was effectively implemented during the time period of this review. We found that the Department lacked sufficient performance goals, direction, coordination, and monitoring to ensure success. This has been a longstanding problem. In 1982 and again in 2007, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the Department needed to measure its effectiveness for its beginning farmers and ranchers assistance. As a result, USDA cannot ensure that the $3.9 billion of beginning farmers’ assistance in FYs 2012 and 2013 has achieved effective and measurable outcomes. In addition, the Department had not provided the Office of Advocacy and Outreach (OAO) with the necessary oversight or resources to effectively accomplish its mandated duties.

As if to underscore the directionless nature of the USDA’s program guidance, the auditors wondered whether the agency even has a clear understanding of what a “beginning farmer” or “beginning rancher” even is.

“Another major obstacle in measuring the effectiveness of beginning farmer assistance is the Department’s lack of a standard definition of ‘beginning farmers,’” the report states. “… Each agency we reviewed had its own definition, sometimes incorporating program eligibility requirements into the definition. While we noted some common themes in the definitions (such as using 10 years of farming experience to define the limit), there were subtle differences between the definitions which rendered them quite distinct.”

The USDA “generally agreed” with the findings, according to the audit.

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