“The 2005 budget is a responsible budget, and it funds key priorities and programs here at USDA by focusing funds on the key areas for USDA--including food and agriculture defense, BSE-related activities, and a record level of support for farm conservation programs, food safety, and nutrition programs.”

That was the main message from Secretary Ann M. Veneman as she unveiled USDA’s proposed budget for FY 2005 at a press conference on February 2. She highlighted several items of importance in the Department’s proposed budget, which she said provides unprecedented funding for a food and nutrition ‘safety net,’ expands agricultural trade, expands housing for rural citizens, invests in America’s rural sector, strengthens forest health and firefighting capabilities, and improves USDA’s program delivery and customer service.

“As you know, we are in a time of fiscal constraint,” she advised, and then emphasized that the Department’s budget proposal for FY 2005 “focuses and maintains resources in order to meet our strategic goals.”

Highlights of the FY 2005 budget proposal include the following items: safeguarding America’s homeland and protecting the food supply, activities related to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or ‘mad cow disease,’ an unprecedented level of farm bill conservation funding, record funding for a food and nutrition ‘safety net,’ expanding agricultural trade and supporting international food assistance programs, providing housing opportunities and investment in rural America, healthy forests, improving Departmental services and systems, and civil rights.

Veneman noted that the proposed budget supports the Department’s strategic plan and is consistent with the USDA policy book titled “Food and Agricultural Policy: Taking Stock for the New Century,” which USDA released in 2001.

USDA’s FY 2005 proposed budget calls for nearly $81.8 billion in spending, an increase of more than $4.0 billion over the Department’s currently estimated spending for FY 2004 of over $77.7 billion.

USDA’s budget proposes a federal staffing level for FY 2005 of 99,048 full-time equivalent positions, or federal staff years. This is a decrease of 2,621 federal staff years from the currently estimated FY 2004 federal staff year level of 101,669.

Agencies that reflect proposed increases in federal staff years for FY 2005 include the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (an increase of 228 federal staff years, to total 6,534 federal staff years), the Farm Service Agency (100, to total 6,017), the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (82, to total 1,375), the Food and Nutrition Service (77, to total 1,749), the Food Safety and Inspection Service (72, to total 9,900), the Risk Management Agency (30, to total 598), and the Office of the General Counsel (15, to total 353).

Agencies with proposed decreases in federal staff years include the Natural Resources Conservation Service (a decrease of 2,032 federal staff years, to total 11,538 federal staff years) and the Forest Service (1,217, to total 34,883). Regarding the federal staff year figure for NRCS, the decrease is caused primarily by the elimination of funding earmarked by the Congress for specific projects, and also because funds are not proposed for NRCS’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program for 2005.

In addition, the temporary full-time non-federal county staff years of FSA are projected to decrease by 1,067--since the workload associated with implementing the commodity and farm income provisions of the farm bill is expected to continue to decline--for a total of 10,284 non-federal staff years for FY 2005.

These federal staff year estimates are all subject to adjustments to reflect the final outcome of budget negotiations, and such unpredictable factors as natural disasters and other emergencies.

Highlights of USDA’s FY 2005 budget proposal, thought to be of particular interest to employees, include:

• $137 million--an increase of $18 million--to upgrade technology in county office service centers. This provides for the continued replacement of aging business and technology systems with a Common Computing Environment (CCE) in those offices. That will allow the service center agencies (Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Rural Development) to share data among themselves and their customers and to streamline business processes. Implementation of the CCE began in 1998 and most of its major hardware and software components are in place. This item also includes the continued incorporation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data into the Department’s agricultural digital mapping project--which makes possible the electronic analysis of soils and land-use data. This analysis, which previously took days or weeks of mapping by hand, now takes only minutes through GIS--and customers will be able to access this USDA information about their land over the Internet, rather than by visiting an agency office. This is all designed to increase the ability of USDA customers to interact with USDA staffers over the Internet, so as to save time and money.
• increased funding of $5.6 million, in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, to improve the Department’s cyber security--through certifying and accrediting USDA systems, improving a Departmentwide Information Survivability program to minimize disruptions caused by malicious intrusions or national catastrophes, and implementing an automated risk management system--and to establish a Security Operations Center.
• $22 million--an increase of $4 million--on efforts to strengthen civil rights and equal treatment under USDA programs. This includes an increase of $2 million to process allegations of discrimination in a more timely manner, plus an increase of $1 million to improve tracking and analysis of allegations of discrimination.
• $381 million for a new “Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative” to: enhance monitoring and surveillance of pests and diseases in plants and animals, conduct research on emerging animal diseases, increase the availability of vaccines for animals, establish a system to track select disease agents of plants, expand the unified Federal-State Diagnostic Network to all 50 states, and complete the National Centers for Animal Health in Ames, Iowa.

For more details on USDA’s proposed staffing levels, as well as additional details on other aspects of USDA’s proposed budget for FY 2005, click on http://www.usda.gov/budget

USDA’s proposed budget for FY 2005 was transmitted to Congress on February 2. •