The Agriculture Department should be reorganized to give a higher priority to food safety, better coordinate services to farmers, and link market development with trade, recommends a panel of experts. The panel, assembled by the National Academy of Public Administration, called for the first overhaul of USDA since 1994. It would eliminate three of the seven undersecretary posts currently in place. They would be replaced by three new undersecretary posts – trade and market development, health and safety, and farm services and risk management – with revised jurisdiction over some of USDA’s most important agencies.
The NAPA report, ordered by Congress, advocates a broader realignment than expected to accommodate the creation of a new office, undersecretary for trade, that was mandated in the 2014 farm law. The panel said the position should be renamed as undersecretary for trade and market development “to more accurately reflect the responsibilities.” In any event, the new post would diminish the power of the undersecretary who now oversees the domestic farm program and agricultural trade. The position often is regarded as second only to the secretary in authority but also requires a punishing travel schedule during trade negotiations.
“The panel recommends that the reorganization be implemented after the next president takes office but emphasizes the need to begin planning for the reorganization now to help ensure a smooth and timely implementation,” said the report. NAPA posted the report on its website after making it available to lawmakers. It has attracted little comment.
Agricultural trade “has undergone a transformation posing both challenges and opportunities for the American agricultural sector,” says the report. “USDA’s organizational structure has become obsolete and a (undersecretary) position focused on trade issues, by design, will help enable consistent high-level focus and enhanced inter-agency coordination on trade issues.”
The five-member panel, chaired by Susan Offutt, former head of USDA’s Economic Research Service, drew a different organizational chart than the reorganization favored by industry. The NAPA report “places a priority on maintaining the independence” of the lead agencies for food safety and agricultural health, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency (APHIS), and would not put them under the jurisdiction of the official in charge of trade promotion.
Under NAPA’s plan, the undersecretary of trade and market development would oversee the Foreign Agricultural Service, with its network of attaches around the globe, and the trade-related work of the Agricultural Marketing Service and Federal Grain Inspection Service. “This portfolio offers important synergies supporting trade promotion efforts in the future inasmuch as quality standards and product differentiation will be increasingly used to create trade barriers as well as to facilitate trade.”
The new post of undersecretary for health and safety would be in charge of FSIS and APHIS. “It simplifies and streamlines coordination on SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) issues to the extent possible by reducing from three to two the number of (undersecretaries) that must coordinate on SPS,” said the report. “At the same time, it heightens the definition of public health, strengthens the United States’ reputation for science-based regulation and enhances mission-critical synergies between the two agencies.” At present, the undersecretary for food safety is in charge of FSIS while APHIS is handled by the undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.
For the third new undersecretary, farm services and risk management, NAPA proposed a portfolio of the Farm Service Agency, which would inherit the domestic components of AMS and grain inspection, and the Risk Management Agency, which oversees federally subsidized crop insurance. The post would replace the current undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services. Also eliminated in the reorganization would be the undersecretary for food safety and the undersecretary for marketing.
Unaffected by the reorganization would be USDA’s public nutrition, environmental stewardship, rural development, and research operations.
Early this year, President Obama proposed creation of a food-safety agency within the Health Department that would include FDA and FSIS. That idea has stalled.