On day 34 of the partial federal government shutdown, Farm Service Agency employees nationwide, including those in the Moniteau County U.S. Department of Agriculture office are back to work.
According to a Department of Agriculture press release offices will be open to offer a variety of services on a specific schedule. The news release says President Trump has signed legislation guaranteeing employees will receive back pay but no paychecks will be delivered at this time.
During the longest shutdown in history, thousands of employees are without pay. In the Moniteau County USDA office at 410 W Buchanan, five Farm Service Agency employees were furloughed.
"The last day we worked was actually the 28th (of December) they got some extra funding for our agency so we got paid that week," Program Technician Barb Denker said.
In a press release, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said 2,500 employees were available to provide limited services Jan. 17-18 and 22-23.
Employees were available to "assist agricultural producers with existing farm loans and to ensure the agency provides 1099 tax documents to borrowers by the Internal Revenue Service's deadline."
"Basically, we were cleaning up calendar year 2018 for people," Denker said.
She said those dates were day to day and no one knew what would happen next.
"There's a lot of people in our agencies that found other jobs, part-time jobs to be able to make ends' meet - buy gas and groceries. Personally, I don't know of anybody locally that did either one of those things several of us made the comment you just don't spend money, you just are careful."
Beginning Jan. 24, offices were open accepting applications and providing services for livestock forage disaster, livestock indemnity program, marketing assistance loans, marketing facilitation program among others.
The market facilitation program, which aids farmers affected by unjustified tariffs deadline was extended to Feb. 14.
"We're here to service the producers the best we can, so the more the merrier," county Executive Director Megan Dunkle said.
The FSA offices will be open until Feb. 1, Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. After this, the offices will operate Tuesday-Thursday.
"I'm happy for myself, I feel sorry for people who have taken other jobs to make ends' meet, because they're not going to get paid and they have to take care of their day-to-day expenditures that's hard on people," Denker said about returning to work.
A list of services not available include new conservation reserve program contracts, new direct and guaranteed farm ownership loans, farm storage facility loan program, emergency conservation program, emergency forest rehabilitation program, and more.