The U.S. Department of Agriculture will pay up to $50,000 each to female and Hispanic farmers and ranchers who claimed they were discouraged from applying for USDA loans due to perceived discrimination. But those farmers won’t be required to prove that they ever actually farmed. The payments are part of a …
A stimulus program designed to create jobs by funding rural utility projects has created only about 12% of the jobs projected at the outset of the program in a sample of towns recently examined by the Agriculture Department’s Inspector General. The IG examined 22 local utilities and government agencies to receive …
A report from the Agriculture Department’s Inspector General has revealed some stunning examples of financial waste in the Department’s nascent technology security efforts, which have mismanaged about $63 million in taxpayer funding. Among the IG’s findings: the USDA spent more than $2 million on an internship program that only hired …
The Agriculture Department’s Rural Housing Service likely loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to ineligible borrowers as part of President Obama’s stimulus package, a report by federal watchdogs has revealed. The stimulus earmarked more than $1 billion for RHS home loans in rural communities. According to the Ag Department’s Inspector …
