Elkhart ? Area merchants and farmers say they will fight plans to shutter Morton County’s Farm Service Agency office.

Bill Fuller, director of the Kansas office of the FSA, a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency, outlined a cost-cutting plan last December that calls for closing 11 of the state’s 103 FSA branches.

“This will have a large economic impact on our community,” said Vienna Lee, who heads up the Morton County Economic Development office. “We’re really up in arms about it, and we plan to say so.”

The plan calls for closing FSA offices in Comanche, Gove and Barber counties and transferring their operations to adjacent counties.

Seven other county offices in eastern Kansas also are targeted. The change, if adopted, would generate savings of $288,519 per year with $24,601 coming from the Morton County closure.

The FSA, which proposed closing nearly a third of its 2,351 offices nationwide before scuttling the plan last year, helps administer government payments to farmers and manages other agricultural programs.

Farmers must pay frequent visits to their local FSA post to report things like the acreage they’re farming, the crops they plan to plant and other information. For his part, Boaldin says he’ll typically visit the Morton County FSA office, which has been around since 1938, 15 to 20 times a year.

Plans call for transferring Morton County’s Elkhart office employees and operations to the FSA office in Hugoton, about 35 miles to the east in Stevens County.

“There’s probably not a soul in Morton County that would support it, not a one,” said Bob Boaldin, chairman of the Morton County Commission and a farmer. Morton County farmers “just think it’s bureaucracy running away,” he said.

Fuller will be in Elkhart next Thursday to meet with locals on the plan. But in a Dec. 21 report outlining his proposal, drawn up in response to a call from Washington for an efficiency review of all FSA offices, he said input at three March 2006 hearings indicated a need for change.

“It became obvious to participants that Kansas FSA must focus their limited resources and reduce unnecessary spending in order to continue our state’s highest priority of providing outstanding service to Kansas farmers and ranchers,” Fuller wrote.