Recipients of the 2011 Darrel Zerger Award for California Farm Loan Team Excellence are (back row, l to r) Sandy Davidson, farm loan officer; Alice Lycan, farm loan program technician; Katherine Lewis, farm loan manager; Ed DeBauche; farm loan officer; (front row, l to r) Jill Monson, farm loan program technician; Emily McCray, farm loan officer trainee.
The California Farm Service Agency has recognized the accomplishments of several farm loan employees by awarding them the Zerger Farm Loan Team Award.
The team, which consists of six employees from two county offices that cover California’s Northern mountain region, was honored for exemplary customer service, which is a challenge in the nine-county territory.
Covering the counties of Siskiyou, Shasta, Lassen, Trinity, Modoc, Plumas, Sierra, Tehama and Butte, requires team members to take day-long drives on mountain roads, sharing the narrow cliffside stretches of highway with semi trucks pulling doubles filled with cut timber, hay super bales and cattle.
The team consistently tackled these challenges to meet regularly with customers and provided customer service that was above expectation.
The Zerger Award was formed in 2005 to recognize the exemplary work of farm loan employees and honor the career of its namesake. FSA Farm Loan Chief Darrel Zerger worked 42 years at USDA. During those years he steered the farm loan program in California through economic downturns and the critical transition of merging the ASCS and Farmers Home Administration into what is now the Farm Service Agency.
