WASHINGTON, D.C. — The USDA on Thursday announced several changes within its agencies in an effort to streamline services and help farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses.

Those changes include faster assistance for disaster relief, speedy reviews of pending product applications and fewer reporting dates. These were announced by the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the Risk Management Agency (RMA) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

“The improvements announced today will help businesses respond more quickly to market demands, provide producers with a more responsive farm safety net and help our customers create jobs,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “President Obama challenged USDA and other federal agencies to streamline operations, and today, USDA is taking a big step toward answering that challenge.”

USDA leadership was asked earlier this year to review the department’s operations and identify improvements and innovations to streamline and improve services and programs. Many of the improvements are part of the USDA Customer Service Plan, which was developed in support of the President’s April Executive Order on “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service.”

The process improvements announced include:

•FSA – USDA is accepting comments on a proposed rule to streamline the process for its Secretarial Disaster Designation, making farmers and ranchers devastated by natural disasters eligible for assistance including low-interest emergency (EM) loans and the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) faster than before.

The improvements outlined in the proposed rule aim to cut the time to make a designation by as much as 70 percent.

One step allows the use of the U.S. Drought Monitor as a tool to automatically trigger disaster areas with no further documentation.

•RMA and FSA – Establishing 15 common Acreage Reporting Dates (ARDs) for farmers and ranchers participating in RMA and FSA programs.

The common reporting dates will reduce the reporting burden on producers and also help reduce USDA operating costs by sharing similar data across participating agencies.

•APHIS – APHIS is making a number of improvements to its process for reviewing license applications for veterinary biologics. APHIS anticipates reducing its licensing processes by potentially 100 days – or a 20 percent savings – by streamlining its process.

According to the agency, APHIS is focused on improving processes to better serve USDA’s customers in the areas of risk assessment and rulemaking for the importation of agricultural products. It found by streamlining data needs, reducing the time for drafting risk assessments and improving project management and tracking, APHIS expects significant improvements.

On petitions requesting non-regulated status for genetically engineered (GE) organisms, APHIS anticipates being able to significantly reduce the average length of the petition process while maintaining strong oversight. The new process will allow earlier input from the public on petitions for deregulations, allowing USDA to better serve all stakeholders.

APHIS is streamlining the enforcement process against those who jeopardize plant and animal health and animal welfare. Under a process pilot-tested last month, APHIS aims to resolve a typical case in 165 days, a time savings of 40 percent. The new target for complex cases is 215 days, a 46 percent time reduction.

For more information on each process improvement, visit each respective agency’s website: www.fsa.usda.gov– www.rma.usda.gov – www.aphis. usda.gov