When he went to work at the Lancaster County Farm Service Agency eight years ago, Greg Chewakin was surprised to discover it was ranked the fourth busiest — not just in Nebraska but the entire United States.

Chewakin remembers his reaction: “I go, ‘Wow! Really?’”

Since then, Lancaster County has slipped back in the pack a bit. But a county that’s certainly better known for what happens in Lincoln than in its cornfields and pastures still has more than 3,000 farms.

Many of them are small, by state standards, but most are on the payroll for federal farm program benefits and for all the paperwork that goes with them.

That explains why Chewakin may not have much time to look out the window of his new office on the city’s southwestern outskirts toward Wilderness Park. But it also explains why his bosses at the state office are not looking at Lincoln as they make hard decisions about consolidating their far-flung operations.

Brian Wolford, state director of the Farm Service Agency, announced the proposed consolidation of 12 county offices with adjoining offices March 27.

Since then he’s spent much of his time on the road, trying to explain the choices to residents who, unlike Lancaster County, depend on agriculture as an economic base.

And he’ll be on the road again this week for the same reason.

“Every county we’ve been to wants their office kept open,” Wolford said between trips to Ponca, Loup City and other relatively remote rural places. “We’ve not had any volunteers, and we didn’t expect to.”

Wolford is trying to respond to the latest directive from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get more work done without being able to hire more people.

Convincing the affected counties that consolidation is the answer is not easy.

Barbara Bauman of Ponca, Greta Kraemer of Allen and Galen Samuelson of Wakefield were among the more than 250 people from northeast Nebraska who crowded into a meeting room at Ponca State Park last week.

They were there to react to plans to merge the Dixon County office at Ponca with Dakota County in Dakota City, closer to Sioux City, Iowa, and about 25 miles away.

“They listened to us,” Bauman said afterward. “They were very pleased with the comments that I think opened their eyes about what our feelings are here. But I don’t know about whether they would reconsider.

“That’s out of our hands — and maybe out of their hands.”

Although Wolford and his staff were asking for input on consolidating offices a year ago, Bauman said, the outcome wasn’t known until Wolford went public March 27.

For her, it was a surprise.

“Our anticipation was that Dakota County would close and they would come to us,” she said, “because they have half the workload and we have three times as many producers in our county.”

One of the most unsettling parts of the explanation from USDA officials was the emphasis on Dakota City being more of a trade center for area farm families than Ponca.

Samuelson is still mystified by that conclusion.

“We can’t come up with anybody for most parts of (Dixon) County that’s using Dakota County as their trade area.”

Most of the other offices on the proposed closing list are in counties where farmers are fewer and depend more on livestock for agricultural income and less on crops — and all the federal programs that are geared more toward crops.

But Dixon County has about 800 crop-oriented farmers, Kraemer said; Dakota County has about 200.

“If those numbers were flip-flopped, I would not be fighting today,” she said.

Wolford may run into an equally skeptical crowd Tuesday when he arrives at the Loup City Community Center in Sherman County for a 1 p.m. exchange of views.

Mark Eurek, a local attorney and partner in an area farming operation, can’t see the justification for closing the office there and making Buffalo County and Kearney the primary location for farmers to connect with farm programs.

“Not that we’re rocket scientists here,” Eurek said, “but we just don’t see how what they’re attempting to do is going to result in a benefit to anybody.”

Buffalo County isn’t going to gain any employees in taking over responsibilities for another county, he said.

“They’re just shifting employees around.”

Sherman County is one of five in the state where the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a sister agency to the Farm Service Agency, is also planning to relocate.

That called for quick action by Shawn Kaskie, just hired as the county’s new economic development director.

“The poor guy was not supposed to start his job until April 1,” Eurek said, “and we found out March 29” about the proposed consolidation.

“And we called him into action to try to help us out with this issue, because this is vital to our economy.”

Since then, Kaskie has put out a position paper in which he asserts that leaving Sherman County out of the USDA office loop would cost more than $500,000 a year in lost salaries and other factors.

Jean Burns, acting executive director at the Farm Service Agency office in Loup City, described area farmers as “very upset. They’re not wanting us to leave.”

Local merchants can also be expected to suffer, because a trip to town to attend to farm-program paperwork was often combined with trips into one or more stores.

“They’re going to lose business,” Burns said. “So they’re going to try to present information at the meeting on Tuesday about why this office should not be closed.”

Back in Lincoln, Wolford is gathering himself to look out on another sea of concerned faces.

“Size doesn’t matter,” he said of the potential audience at Loup City and at four other stopping places. “It’s not a population contest. It’s to try to address the issue of reduced staff across the state.”

No matter where he goes, he said, “we hope people understand we’ve tried to be fair and consistent in the process, in applying the criteria. And we admit we may not know all the intricacies of the area.”

The 30-day comment period for the Nebraska proposal ends April 27.

At that point, the overall plan will get a last look for any changes before it’s sent on to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

The rules then require Johanns to notify Congress and wait 120 days before taking any action.

Greta Kraemer in Dixon County and probably many others are hoping the action will be somewhere else.

“I don’t know if their minds are made up or not,” Kraemer said. “I sure hope not.”

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net.