Food and Agriculture Issues

This report is part of the transition series, a set of 28 reports summarizing GAO's findings on major problems confronting federal agencies, as well as economic and management issues facing Congress and the incoming Administration. One cluster of transition reports, including those on the budget deficit and investment, addresses broad policy issues affecting government as a whole and its relationship to the economy. Another group of reports addresses issues affecting specific federal agencies, such as the Defense Department and the Internal Revenue Service. A third group of reports looks at cross-cutting management issues--everything from financial management to information management. GAO highlighted many of these problems in a similar set of reports issued in 1988. In some instances, progress has been made; all too often, however, the problems have continued to fester and grow worse. In general, the state of management in the federal government is poor. Too many management ideas--and resulting agency structures and processes--that worked well in the past now hinder the government from responding quickly and effectively to a world in tremendous flux. Most agencies have no strategic vision of the future, lack sound systems to collect and apply financial and program information to gauge operational success and accountability, and too often do without people with the skills necessary to accomplish their missions. The Comptroller General summarized the series in testimony before Congress; see: Major Issues Facing a New Congress and a New Administration, by Charles A. Bowsher, Comptroller General of the United States, before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. GAO/T-OCG-93-1, Jan. 8, 1993 (30 pages).

GAO found that: (1) since 1988, fiscal pressures have enhanced the importance of reforming farm credit and risk protection, as well as coordinating federal programs for ensuring food safety and quality; (2) the Department of Agriculture (USDA) needs to simplify and streamline its organization to become more accessible and responsive to its highly diverse clients; (3) the 1985 and 1990 farm bills moved U.S. agriculture towards a greater market orientation, helping to make U.S. farm commodities more competitive in the marketplace; (4) several USDA programs aimed at providing loans, crop insurance, and disaster assistance to farmers expose the federal government to high risks of large financial losses; (5) many of the federal assistance programs target the agricultural sector even though farming is no longer a major economic base for many rural communities; and (6) there are consistently documented structural flaws in the federal government's food safety system.