Farmers Struggling to Get Services from Depleted USDA Workforce

The New York Times’ Linda Qiu reported that “across the country, farmers and rural residents describe struggling to obtain the basic services the Agriculture Department is meant to offer, including loans and grants, technical assistance and financing for housing and utilities.” “Sharp attrition under the Trump administration, largely through voluntary resignations and dismissals by the Department of Government Efficiency, have left many of the Agriculture Department’s local offices with skeletal staffing — and, in some counties, with no one at all,” Qiu reported. “The ripple effects of the Agriculture Department’s depleted work force illustrate how the Trump administration’s mission of shrinking the federal bureaucracy has undercut a competing priority: delivering for farmers, a core political constituency.” “Strained government resources also risk posing additional challenges for a farm economy that administration officials have described as ‘dire,’ increasing barriers to entry for new farmers who need more assistance, impeding assistance to producers already facing tough economic conditions, and hampering basic services and government aid in the most remote and poorest places,” Qiu reported. PHOTO HERE The Natural Resources Conservation Service, for example “has lost more than 2,700 workers, or nearly a fourth of its staff, forcing farmers to miss contract deadlines and turn to expensive private consultants for advice,” Qiu reported. “In central Nebraska, Clay Govier, who farms corn and soybeans on 3,500 acres in Broken Bow, described the cascading effect of 50 percent staffing cuts at his local conservation agency. The technician he had worked with took a buyout at the start of the Trump administration. Now, Mr. Govier and his family coordinate with someone who travels between two counties to survey different farms.” “Though the technician is knowledgeable, ‘he’s stretched very thin because if he needs a signature, he has to drive to our farm and then he drives back or we have to drive to him, and it just burns up an entire morning to get some basic paperwork done,’ Mr. Govier said,” according to Qiu’s reporting. “As a result, the office is missing more details and overlooking crucial steps to verifying the farmers’ practices these days, leading to delays in the contract cycle and payments.”

XXXXXX

Progressive Farmer’s Jake Zajkowski reported that “top USDA leadership has acknowledged an ‘imbalance between the work and the workforce.’ In a recent interview with DTN, Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden said NRCS has a map identifying staffing shortages and that the agency is ‘working to even it out.’” “The agency told DTN it plans to hire 272 NRCS employees this year, leaving it 346 short of its 9,500-employee goal. As of June 2026, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data shows NRCS had 8,882 employees — well below its 2020-25 average of 10,698,” Zajkowski reported. “But what that means locally remains unclear.” “‘That’s the frustrating part,’ said Lehman, who is also the president of the Iowa Farmers Union. ‘I don’t know the answer to why we’re not getting the answer about where we are at with our USDA staff,'” Zajkowski reported. “FSA offices remain open on paper, as required by law, but staffing has been shifted and offices fragmented. It’s a new model for FSA and NRCS: doing more with less under federal workforce reduction directives, while USDA’s reorganization also shifts work and modernizes paperwork.”

USDA Hires Expected to Only Offset Most Attrition

Government Executive’s Jory Heckman and Sean Michael Newhouse reported that “more than 28,000 employees have separated from the Agriculture Department, largely through voluntary separation incentives, since the start of the second Trump administration. Factoring in hiring, the department has seen a net decrease of nearly 16,000 employees.” “DOJ attorneys wrote that USDA hasn’t conducted any attrition analysis yet, but will do so, ‘in conjunction with hiring and facilities planning at relocation sites as it finalizes relocation plans on an agency-by-agency basis,'” Heckman and Newhouse reported. “‘The best information currently available to the agency indicates that, as a result of the current job market, attrition will be less than during prior reorganizations,’ they wrote.” “Agriculture officials told the court on July 24 that the department is planning to hire nearly 16,000 employees this year. But according to updated staffing plans, the department expects that a ‘majority’ of its hiring initiatives will ‘result in no net gain,’ and will instead ‘offset expected attrition,'” Heckman and Newhouse reported. “‘In fact, through workforce optimization initiatives, these organizations may end FY 2026 with reduced employee counts where attrition outpaces gains,’ USDA wrote.”