The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

personnel work. The tight budgets and hiring freeze of the late 1990s are past, and the Service has grown a bit the last two years under FAS Administrator A. Ellen Terpstra, who before joining FAS had 18 years of experience as a Civil Service employ- ee of the U.S. Trade Representative and other posts in which she worked on agricultural trade and policy. During the Clinton administration she headed two private trade associations, the Rice Federation and then the U.S. Apple Association. So she knows the territory. But the agency, whose chief mission is helping American agricultural exports, does face two daunting challenges. The first is completing the transition (already under way) from being primarily a reporting office to one that actively promotes U.S. crops and related products. The second challenge is a subset of that one: with geneti- cally modified organisms playing an ever-larger role in U.S. food production, and many importers — above all the European Union — resisting the new biotechnology, FAS is looking for ways to sell the world on genetically modified U.S. crops. How the Foreign Service Fits In While FAS officially came into existence in 1953, the history of diplomatic personnel reporting on agricultural conditions abroad and helping U.S. exporters goes back to the early days of the new republic. Over the last century or so, the function switched back and forth several times between the State Department and the Agriculture Department, each time becoming larger and better orga- nized. In July 1954, Congress passed legislation transfer- ring the corps of agricultural attachés from State to USDA, and converting them from Foreign Service to Civil Service status. FAS again became a home to FSOs after the Foreign Service Act of 1980. The agricultural attachés in FAS were given a choice of continuing as Civil Service or being grandfathered into the Foreign Service. Many became FSOs. Dan Berman, a senior FSO who was in FAS in the 1970s, has always been glad he chose the Foreign Service. “Being in the Foreign Service gives you a sense of identity,” he says, “and you do so many different things over the years.” Despite such career satisfaction, the Foreign Service officer contin- gent at FAS peaked at 210 a few years ago, and has not yet recovered fully from several years of sharp falls. As of March 2003, the agency’s approximately 1,000 employees included 168 FSOs, of whom 99 were serving overseas, and 69 in the United States — almost all of those in Washington. Four FAS Civil Service professionals also work for the agency over- seas, as do about 130 Foreign Service Nationals who pro- vide FAS with vital local information and administrative support. Because of the disproportion between the two types of employees, the question of which positions go to Foreign Service employees and which to the Civil Service can be a tricky one. Agricultural attachés are always FSOs, but there’s another type of overseas slot, known as agricultur- al trade officers, focused on export promotion, not on pol- icy. Those officers can come either from the Foreign or Civil Service. In addition, directors’ positions in Washington can go either way — to a GS-15 or an FS-1. In previous years, competition for positions often led to tensions. One senior Civil Service employee acknowl- edges, “It’s still a split agency. The two groups are always watching each other. We try to keep a balance.” However, both categories of employees tell the Foreign Service Journal that the tense feelings have abated recently. Says Steve Huete, an FSO with 20 years at the agency, “There’s going to be a certain amount of tension. But we’ve been working it out, with help from the two unions, AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) and AFSA.” Huete believes one thing that has reduced tension is an improved placement process for overseas posts: “We [now] have established pro- cedures for bidding. [The process] is fairly transparent.” As for stateside jobs, a key improvement has been the Washington Placement Plan, one Civil Service manager tells the Journal . The WPP guarantees that “every Foreign Service person coming from overseas has to have a position waiting for them. Otherwise, as in the past, they’d be walking the halls.” F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 Bob Guldin is a former editor of the Journal . He is now a freelance writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., area. FAS is moving from being primarily a reporting office to one that actively promotes U.S. crops and related products.