Bye named to head County's FSA

Pomeroy native Tory Bye took over last month as executive director of Whitman County’s office of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency.

“You know, minus the snow, I’m very excited to be here,” Bye said Monday.

Bye graduated from Whitworth University in 2010 and immediately began training for a leadership position in the FSA.

After spending six weeks in six offices all around the state, Bye was named director of Yakima County’s FSA, where he served for the next eight months.

“It’s nice to be closer to home,” he said. “While I learned a lot about apples and cherries, it’s nice to deal with agriculture that I’m at least halfway familiar with.”

Bye’s family owns and operates a wheat farm around Pomeroy.

Bye said the post comes with a learning curve of the alphabet soup of federal farm programs.

“I don’t know if everybody ever gets a real good handle on all those acronyms,” he said.

He succeeds Kathy Wolfe, who retired last August after serving as Whitman County’s executive director for one year.

Fred Hendrickson, a program technician, served as the interim director while the county committee sought the new director.