USDA has delivered farm programs through county offices since 1933. At that time, to serve more than 6 million farmers, ASCS had a county office in nearly all of the 3,100 agricultural counties in the United States. These county offices were managed by a county executive director hired by a committee of locally elected farmers. The director supervised employees who administered commodity programs for crops such as wheat, feed grains, cotton, rice, tobacco, and peanuts; conservation programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program; and emergency assistance. As the number of farms in the United States has declined to the current level of about 1.9 million and transportation and communications have improved, USDA and the Congress have at various times attempted to reduce the number of county offices or reduce county office staffing. The 1994 act was the latest such effort. Under the 1994 act, FSA was created by merging the staffs of the former ASCS and part of the former Farmers Home Administration. Many of the newly formed FSA offices continue to be managed by a county executive director hired by a committee of locally elected farmers. The former ASCS’ staff was reduced from 13,432 in 1995 to 11,729 in 1997, while about 2,200 former Farmers Home Administration employees were assigned to FSA’s county offices to help administer agricultural credit programs. The 1996 act significantly changed USDA’s administrative requirements for the commodity programs. From the 1930s through 1996, USDA provided annual payments—more recently called deficiency payments—to participating farmers under federal commodity programs. These payments were based on annual calculations involving historical acreage devoted to agricultural production, market prices for crops, and support prices set by the Congress and the Secretary of Agriculture. Participation in the commodity programs was limited to farmers who agreed annually to limit production in order to receive deficiency payments. This annual requirement no longer exists. Under the new program, any one whose farm had a recorded planting history for wheat, feed grains, cotton, and rice in any single year from 1991 to 1995 could sign a production flexibility contract. Those who signed these contracts in 1996 are generally eligible to receive annual payments through 2002, regardless of the crop planted. Although signing up for the program was to be a one-time event, changes in farming operations may require participants to modify their contracts. For example, USDA’s annual payments to farms that are leased are normally shared between the farmer and the landowner. Because many leases are for only 1 year, these contracts will need to be revised annually to reflect current lease agreements. In addition, land comes out of the Conservation Reserve Program annually, and this land can be signed up in the new program. In carrying out their program management responsibilities, county office staff perform a variety of tasks, including informing farmers of available programs and their requirements; signing up producers to participate in the programs; and maintaining basic information on program participants in their county, including the names and addresses of producers, the tracts they farm, the programs they participate in, and the payments they receive. While the 1996 act has reduced the need for some basic crop information, other information is still needed to ensure compliance with the requirements of related farm programs and to make certain that annual payment limitations to any single individual are not exceeded. For a number of years, FSA has used its work measurement and workload systems to capture the work performed in county offices and provide a basis for projecting county offices’ annual needs for staffing and administrative funding. To make these projections, FSA selects about 6 percent of its county offices (currently 157 of 2,440 offices) to represent county offices nationwide. FSA attempts to include in its 6-percent sample offices representing different farming practices and commodities, as well as offices of different sizes. At these offices, FSA records the amount of time staff spend on each of the over 150 different work activities that define FSA’s workload. FSA applies these statistical data from the 157 work measurement offices to the workload units reported by all county offices in order to project staffing needs for each of the 2,440 county offices nationwide. In recent years, because of directed staff reductions, the system also has been used as a tool to help distribute staff cuts. The calculated workload for each county office includes fixed costs, such as general administration, training, and computer maintenance operations. USDA’s budget submission for fiscal year 1998 proposes a reduction of 1,850 former ASCS employees from 1997 levels. This proposed reduction is made up of two components. First, FSA concluded that 850 fewer employees were needed to handle its projected workload. Second, USDA agreed to reduce FSA’s staffing by an additional 1,000 employees to meet the budget reduction targets set forth in the President’s 1998 budget proposal. Beyond 1998, the Office of Management and Budget has proposed cutting former ASCS employees, now at FSA, by an additional 5,000, down to 4,879 employees by fiscal year 2002. Two factors—a limited amount of available data following the implementation of the 1996 act and other changes triggered by the 1994 act—make it difficult to isolate and assess the effects of the 1996 act on workload levels in county offices. FSA’s work measurement and workload systems provide the agency with a management tool for determining workload distribution and resource staffing needs. Workload data are captured at the end of the fiscal year. Our efforts to measure the impact of the 1996 act were hamstrung by the lack of availability of a full year’s workload data following the act’s implementation. To measure this impact, we would need to compare the data for a full year prior to and following the act’s implementation. Partial year comparisons are not useful because farm program activities are not always implemented at the same time each year. As of June 1997, only 6 months of data were available on FSA’s workload following the implementation of the 1996 act. A number of factors triggered by the 1994 act have also affected workload levels in county offices, making it difficult to isolate the impact of the 1996 act. These changes include the addition of responsibilities for agricultural credit and crop insurance programs and changes to USDA’s county office structure. As a result, county office staff have assumed new responsibilities and undergone organizational and staffing changes at the same time that the 1996 act was reducing responsibilities for traditional commodity programs. Determining the effect of the changes resulting from the 1996 act in this context is not possible. One of the major changes brought about by the 1994 act was the transfer of agricultural credit responsibilities to FSA’s county offices. Even though about 2,200 former Farmers Home Administration employees were added to the county offices to help administer these responsibilities, many FSA employees previously responsible for administering commodity programs are now also administering portions of the agricultural credit programs. These additional responsibilities cloud comparisons of workload before and after the 1996 act. The 1994 act also assigned FSA the responsibility for a new catastrophic crop insurance program. The Congress directed all FSA offices to make catastrophic insurance available to all farmers. Farmers were required to obtain this insurance—either from FSA or a private insurer—if they wanted to participate in USDA’s commodity programs. Approximately 450,000 farmers purchased catastrophic crop insurance from FSA’s county offices in fiscal years 1995 and in 1996. FSA did not receive any additional staff to carry out these responsibilities. Once again, the evolving nature of responsibilities in FSA’s county offices complicates any comparison of workload over this time period. Finally, the reorganization mandated under the 1994 act required the Secretary of Agriculture to streamline the Department’s operations. Within FSA, this effort has been accomplished in fiscal years 1995 through 1997 by reducing staffing in those county offices with the largest number of employees as well as by closing about 150 county offices and transferring the responsibilities of these offices to other county offices. These changes make it difficult to determine the impact of the 1996 act on county office workload. Lacking a clear picture of workload changes from the existing national workload measurement system, we visited 16 county offices to get a first-hand impression of workload levels and any recent changes in these levels. (App. I provides descriptive information on these county offices.) The 16 county executive directors told us that while some aspects of their offices’ work have decreased since the passage of the 1996 act, their offices have also taken on new responsibilities. These additions, coupled with reductions in the staff formerly dedicated to administering commodity-related programs, have resulted in increasing the per person volume of work for the remaining staff. County executive directors acknowledged that the time spent on specific activities for the commodity programs—both enrolling farmers in the programs and ensuring compliance with the program’s requirements—has decreased since the passage of the 1996 act. This decrease has occurred because the new production flexibility contracts require less information from farmers and less oversight by county office staff than did the commodity programs. However, the directors believed that this decrease was largely offset by increases in the number of contracts needed to be completed because of the increased level of participation in the program. County executive directors offered a number of observations to support their view that workload per person has increased overall. First, they pointed out that the initial enrollment for production flexibility contracts in 1996 doubled the number of participants from those previously participating in the commodity programs from 3 million to 6 million. The enrollments were a one-time event that will not be repeated, except for land leaving the Conservation Reserve Program. However, a certain proportion of farmers will have to amend their contracts periodically. Amendments are necessary when changes are made to (1) farm ownership, (2) leasing relationships, or (3) payment provisions. The volume of work associated with these changes in 1997 and beyond will be less than the work associated with the initial enrollments. However, because only 6 months of data for fiscal year 1997 are available, we do not have a basis for assessing the full impact on the workload for 1997 and beyond. Second, the directors stated that the increased level of participation has resulted in a higher volume of work associated with ancillary recordkeeping activities, such as recording changes in farm ownership.