Ag secretary Vilsack christens St. Louis County facility
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 28, 2011
By Steve Giegerich
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ended a whirlwind tour of St. Louis Monday with a ceremonial ribbon cutting at a facility that will provide up to 350 jobs -- most of those part-time -- when it opens this summer.
The former Iowa governor began his day pushing the Obama administration's agriculture agenda at a riverfront grain elevator in North St. Louis.
Vilsack then headed to a lunch meeting with the St. Louis Agribusiness Club at a Westport hotel.
There, the secretary reiterated his call for a trade agreement with the potential to boost trade exports to Korea by $1.9 billion a year.
Vilsack seized the opportunity two hours later to lobby two of the legislators who will ultimately decide the fate of the trade proposal.
Republican Missouri U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt and Democratic Rep. Lacey Clay were among the state and local officials that joined Vilsack for the ribbon cutting at the National Agricultural Statistics Service's National Operation Center which will open Aug. 1 in Overland.
The agriculture department division will take over the space in a federal office building currently occupied by the National Personnel Record Center.
That agency is scheduled to vacate the building in May when it moves to a new facility in North St. Louis County.
The building will soon become the data hub for a division that every year compiles up to 475 agricultural surveys.
In 2012, it will consolidate the information accumulated by the Census of Agriculture, a massive accounting that measures the state of American farming every five years.
Center director Bob Bass said the agriculture department plans to transfer approximately 50 employees from other agency outposts.
Another 50 full-time employees will be hired outright from the St. Louis area, including clerical and information technology workers.
The additional hires will be for part-time telephone survey positions, between 10 to 30 hours a week.
