ASC Department of Agriculture

The ASC Department of Agriculture (ASDA or DoA), otherwise known as the Agriculture Department, is a Department of the Castle of the Unitary Government of Cyberia that manages all things food-related at the government level. It is the component of government that officially holds control over some of the largest crop-growing facilities in the country by volume. The Agriculture Department has a reputation for being the department with the highest number of hired civilian workers, as opposed to military personnel.

In addition to operating crop-growing facilities, the ASDA also conducts extensive inspection into food-based companies and their goods, including its own, in pursuit of strict health and safety regulations for the general public which consumes the food in question.

History

In the early 2060's, the Cyberian government was heavily considering greatly expanding the line of standalone departments, as opposed to leaving the majority of government control with the Department of Defense. The first of the large government expansion was the Department of Treasury in the latter months of 2068, then the Department of Resource Management in 2106, then the Department of Agriculture ten years later.

In the beginning, the Cyberian government supplied the fledgling country with both raw foods and prepared food products; and over time, there appeared more and more companies that bought seeds and/or raw edible resources in bulk from the government and opened business as their own food producers and sellers. As more private companies set up their lucrative businesses, the ASDA followed suit by decreasing packaged food sales, increasing harvest sales, and increasing food inspection efforts in all areas, now that food production was largely out of the public's hands. Today, the ASDA still operates as the country's largest grower and harvester of many kinds of crops and variants of them, which it altogether stockpiles in relatively small percentages, and otherwise sells in large percentages to trusted companies who then manufacture a very wide range of packaged food products for sale to consumers. There exists independent companies who operate their own crop growing facilities, harvest said crops, and subsequently process raw food resources into packaged foods without government intervention save for food safety inspection, however they are in the minority within the food industry.

Office of the President of Agriculture

See also: Unitary Government of Cyberia § Offices of the Presidents

In the Office of the President of Agriculture, the Agriculture President's subordinate officers are responsible for keeping their president informed of any and all agricultural concerns within the country, especially about any breaches in food safety, as well as progress or the lack thereof of research and development of new food products or methodology used to make said products.

Major Responsibilities

Non-Soil Based Industrial-Scale Crop Growth and Harvest

Due to living with the great disadvantage that is an extremely frigid, dry, and otherwise naturally uninhabitable continent for most species of animal and plant, the government of the Antarctic State strives to go above and beyond the needs of the country in regards to supplying it with raw foods and prepared food products made from those raw foods. It achieves this through the operation of extremely large crop growth facilities, which are buildings built from the ground up specifically for the industrial-scale growth and harvest of raw food resources. These buildings have multiple floors, the smallest ones having no less than ten, each taken up by non-soil-based plantations. These facilities are continuously monitored and climate-controlled for the ideal conditions for quick and plentiful crop growth. In addition, most floors are subject to automated harvesting.

Food Health and Safety

It is a very important duty of the ASDA to regularly inspect each and every organization that is concerned with the production, provision, and/or sale of food for the meeting or exceeding of a variety of government established health and safety standards in the pursuit of giving the public peace of mind in that their food is well and truly safe for consumption, on top of keeping the average civilian healthy, however not in an invasive manner.

Ration Production, Provision, and Storage

In its current state, the Agriculture Department's production of packaged foods has largely centered itself in on the production of rations for emergency and non-emergency use, though they are much the same product regardless of circumstance. These rations are able to be stored indefinitely, and are usually shipped to coastal military bases where they are most often consumed on the spot rather than regular, city foods. Cities and military bases alike have large storages of these rations, and these storages are only to be accessed during emergencies such as natural disasters or large-scale conflicts.

Major Divisions

Food Inspection and Safety Commission

The second largest Agricultural division, the Food Inspection and Safety Commission (FISC), is tasked with carrying out the many inspection duties of the ASDA. It is split into two subdivisions, one concerned with the civilian food market, and the other concerned with the military food market, such as rations, MREs and their preservability. The civilian foods subdivision is much more widespread and more strict than its partner, since it deals with the health and safety of the general public. FISC holds any and all food-related products and their manufacturers to a certain standard of health and safety that is affected by many different facets and circumstances within the food industry. This includes standards of nutrition as well, which is a component of the "health" in health and safety.

Violations of food health and safety carry heavy legal punishments and high percentage fines, which can subsequently result in the shutdown of small or even medium businesses. As one of many services to the general public, the civilian subdivision of FISC places a rating on various restaurants and to a lesser extent food products as well, indicating the qualities of cleanliness in the context of restaurants, and the quality of the food itself in the context of restaurants and edible products.

Public Ration Production Service

The Public Ration Production Service, otherwise known as the "Ration Service", is the component of the ASDA that packages and ships rations to impoverished civilians and other storages for emergency use. These rations are made to be completely self contained, self heating, readily accessible to the consumer, and able to be preserved for a very long time, if not indefinitely.

Interestingly, rations and MREs can be bought directly from the government, provided one knows the avenues necessary to purchase them. Single ration packs are known to be much more expensive than they are if bought in bulk packs of 5, 10, 15, 20, or more, with each larger bulk pack being less in price per-item.

National Nutrition Research & Farm Organization

The National Nutrition Research & Farm Organization, shortened to NRFO, is the largest division of the ASDA and is tasked with the industrial level growing, harvesting, and selling of raw food resources to both itself as the government and to the general public as a whole. The NRFO is the component of the Agriculture Department that remains in control of most of the largest crop growing and handling facilities in the country, the produce of which is mostly sold off to private companies who then provide prepared or otherwise packaged food products for the public.

These crop growth and harvest facilities are extremely vast buildings with multiple levels to them, with each floor being taken up by a very well organized plantation of one or more genetically modified crops, all suspended in non-soil-based apparatuses and climate-controlled rooms tailored to each produce type's overall ideal conditions for quick and plentiful growth. In layman's terms, nearly all of not the entirety of government owned crops are artificially engineered on nano, micro, and macroscopic scales to ensure controlled growth acceleration and higher-than-natural yields. Every level of these buildings are continuously monitored by various measurement systems on top of surveillance systems.

Also contained within the NFRO are a number of research and development teams tasked with furthering various food-related studies, improving upon past, present, and future methods of crop production and food preparing. This specific component of the department is what is responsible for the reputation the ASDA has for hiring the most numbers of civilian workers, which in this case are college graduates holding an earned degree in relevant research fields.