Colburn: USDA should issue farmers new contracts

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The farm community and state officials continue to come to the defense of three Eastern Shore farmers and their neighboring landowners embroiled in a contractual dispute with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The three — the Hutchison Brothers, Mike Elben and Sonny Eaton — have been ordered to return to the United States government the money they received under the NRCS Conservation Security Program under contracts they signed five years ago, and which the farmers have testified NRCS staffers helped them draft and urged them to sign.
They also performed all the conservation projects outlined in the contracts.
State Sen. Richard Colburn, R, Dist. 37, said the USDA should simply issue new contracts to the farmers “and be done with it.”
He issued this statement:
“It is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to understand the workings of the state bureaucracy, let alone the federal bureaucracy.
“Despite the fact that the USDA acknowledged these farmers were eligible and despite the fact that all three farms have fully implemented all items in their CSP contracts, the USDA now wants $1 million back because the Natural Resources Conservation Service should have implemented separate CSP contracts.
“It seems ridiculous that the federal government would want these farm families to mortgage and possibly lose their family farms because of a bureaucratic boondoggle.
“It would seem feasible that the USDA could and should issue separate CSP contracts (without an act of Congress) and be done with it.
“The Eatons, Elbens and Hutchisons are outstanding farm families on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. They had no intention of deceiving the USDA or the federal government. The federal government should not be penalizing these families because they were misled by the bureaucracy.”