Farm Service Agency

Through its farm credit programs, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) makes loans at less-than-market interest rates to borrowers with limited resources. As a result of agency consolidations, FSA now has a number of its own employees, members of county farmer committees, and family members and business associates of these groups participating in the farm credit program. FSA is starting to phase out the eligibility of all of its employees for farm loans and has been trying to identify cases requiring action to avoid conflicts of interest. This report reviews the (1) number of FSA federal and nonfederal employees as well as county committee members with FSA farm loans; (2) comparative size and repayment history of farm loans to FSA federal employees, FSA's nonfederal employees, county committee members, and other FSA borrowers; (3) number of cases FSA has identified requiring action to avoid conflicts of interest; and (4) measures FSA has taken to address these cases.

GAO noted that: (1) as of September 30, 1996, FSA's loan portfolio indicated that 414 of about 16,300 FSA federal and nonfederal employees and 1,209 of about 8,150 members of county committees had 4,089 FSA farm loans; (2) while the outstanding principal of the loans of FSA's federal and nonfederal employees and county committee members was about $265 million of FSA's outstanding loan principal of $16.9 billion, these employees' loans differed in size when compared with the loans of other FSA borrowers; (3) as of September 30, 1996, the loans of FSA's federal employees averaged about $197,700 per borrower, the loans of nonfederal employees averaged about $127,000, the loans of FSA's county committee members averaged about $183,500, and the loans of all other borrowers averaged about $145,200 per borrower; (4) with respect to repayment history, FSA's federal and nonfederal employees and county committee members were delinquent and needed debt relief on their farm loans less often than other borrowers; (5) however, when these employees received debt relief, it was greater than the relief granted other borrowers, 53 percent, on average, for FSA's federal employees, and 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively, for nonfederal employees and county committee members; (6) as of March 1997, FSA had identified 1,767 cases in which its federal and nonfederal employees or county committee members had loans or relationships with other borrowers that required action to avoid conflicts of interest; (7) these cases were identified through FSA's review of 3,622 cases in which FSA's federal and nonfederal employees and county committee members reported that they or their relatives or business associates had FSA farm loans; (8) the total number of cases is likely to increase as FSA proceeds with its efforts to identify cases requiring action to avoid conflicts of interest; (9) although FSA has made progress in dealing with conflicts of interest, it has not provided its state offices with clear and consistent guidance on how to identify and address conflict-of-interest cases; (10) furthermore, FSA headquarters has not reviewed the state offices' efforts to address conflicts of interest; and (11) as a result, FSA's state offices vary in the extent to which they have identified and taken action on cases to avoid conflicts of interest.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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