Other Ag News: USDA Staffing Crisis: A Year of Losses and the Road Ahead

This is the final post in the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)’s series documenting the ongoing staffing crisis across the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The scale and speed of staffing losses across the USDA, combined with the uncertainty introduced by a sweeping USDA reorganization plan, have weakened the Department at the very moment farmers face rising production costs, unstable markets, and climate-driven disasters. As we conclude the series, the data show a federal workforce under extreme strain and an urgent need for renewed investment in the staff that make the People’s Department function.

Beginning in January 2025, USDA experienced historic workforce disruption. Nearly 3,000 employees separated from the agency in the first quarter alone, according to the Office of Personnel Management. These early losses included both longstanding staff, many with 20 or more years of institutional knowledge, and recent hires who had not yet completed their first year of service. 

The truly unprecedented staff losses followed soon after, with roughly 15,173 USDA employees who accepted Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) buyouts. 94% of the USDA staff who left via the DRP were located outside of the Washington, DC area. All of the staff who accepted the DRP officially separated from the agency on September 30, 2025. 

Figure 1: Location of USDA Staff Who Left Via DRP

The consequences of these losses were immediate.

• Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), already struggling to meet rising farmer demand, lost planners, engineers, and program technicians whose expertise cannot be easily replaced. Promising conservationists like Gretchen Troutman and Josh Hardin are no longer there to help farmers design conservation plans and get funding to protect and enhance the resources that ensure their farm’s viability.

• Farm Service Agency (FSA) lost staff responsible for administering farm loans, disaster assistance, and commodity programs—programs that require precise and timely processing to keep farms solvent. FSA offices like the Oklahoma office where Kevin Dale used to work have had their staff cut in half or are fully vacant, even as work demands increase with the need to allocate 30 million new base acres and administer an additional $12 billion in farm financial assistance. 
• Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) saw experienced inspectors, veterinarians, and plant-health specialists exit, threatening on-the-ground food safety and biosecurity capacity.
• Rural Development offices lost staff with an average of 13.5 years of service, with departures heavily concentrated among the most junior and most senior employees, leaving gaps in both institutional memory and day-to-day operations. These Rural Development staff administer programs like the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP) to help grow rural economies.
• The research agencies Economic Research Service (ERS), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) lost economists, scientists, and program leaders whose work underpins federal decision-making, weakening USDA’s capacity to produce market forecasts, evaluate conservation outcomes, support climate research, and administer competitive research grants.

Taken together, the federal workforce responsible for serving farmers, protecting food safety, and supporting rural communities shrank dramatically in a matter of months.

In July 2025, USDA announced a major reorganization plan, drafted without public input, that would relocate thousands of jobs, consolidate field offices, and restructure core program functions. Early descriptions suggest the relocation of up to 2,600 headquarters and regional staff, along with the consolidation or closure of dozens of field offices across NRCS, FSA, Rural Development (RD), and other agencies. US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has publicly stated that she expects up to half of the staff to leave the department rather than relocate.

For agencies already operating with gutted staff and the loss of institutional knowledge, this reorganization introduces additional layers of uncertainty. Staff have been given limited details about timelines, office closures, reassignments, or new reporting structures. Farmers and stakeholders have been offered no clarity on how service delivery might be affected. During their adhoc public comment period on the reorganization, the USDA received nearly 47,000 emails. Their own analysis concludes that 82% of the responses expressed negative sentiment and concerns. 

The risk is not theoretical. The deepest staffing losses occurred in agencies already stretched thin and struggling to meet demand, leaving many USDA programs operating with minimal capacity at a time when farmers are facing a worsening financial crisis. Producers rely on these services for conservation planning, loan processing, disaster assistance, and basic continuity of their operations. Any reorganization risks amplifying these strains precisely when farmers need USDA support the most.

When the government shut down on October 1, 2025, the incredible importance of USDA staff and services became even more evident. Outreach events were canceled, conservation planning stalled, loan processing halted, and food safety inspections were forced to rely on already overstretched emergency staffing systems.

Farmers like Lindsay, from Tourvaille Farm in Ohio, could not get their conservation contracts paid on time because staff were furloughed. Others like Celeste, a farmer from Washington, didn’t receive their much-needed farm loans and safety net payments. These and the hundreds of other stories of American farmers and rural communities unable to access the resources and services they depend upon made visible the often-overlooked importance of USDA staff. 

The bill to reopen the government – passed on November 13, 2025 – included several provisions that shape the future of USDA staffing and services:

• First, the bill provided full-year funding for USDA, ensuring that USDA staff will not be furloughed for the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year.
• Second, Congress inserted new oversight requirements that could limit USDA’s ability to move forward with large-scale reorganizations, relocations, or office closures. This represents one of the first meaningful checks on the reorganization since its announcement.
• Third, the legislation stabilized funding for research, economics, and scientific programs, which had been targeted earlier in the year. These investments protect programs critical for conservation science, agricultural innovation, climate adaptability, and economic forecasting—areas where staff expertise had already thinned due to the 2025 staff losses.

However, the shutdown bill did not reverse the staffing losses the USDA has already endured. It did not pause the reorganization, only slowed it and perhaps established some guardrails. And it did not provide any emergency hiring authorities, retention tools, or explicitly additional staffing budgets that agencies desperately need to rebuild.

The staffing crisis of 2025 makes clear that USDA’s capacity has been compromised at the precise moment when robust federal support for farmers is most essential. Without intervention, service gaps will widen, inequities in access will grow, and core missions of the USDA, from conservation to farm resilience, food safety, and rural development, will falter.

NSAC urges the Administration and Congress to rebuild staffing across all USDA mission areas and pause the reorganization until a transparent and iterative process is laid out to meaningfully integrate stakeholder input. USDA must prioritize immediate hiring in NRCS, FSA, RD, and other agencies suffering acute shortages. This includes restoring positions equivalent to those lost through the DRP and other separations and creating pathways for experienced staff to return where appropriate. No USDA reorganization and structural change should proceed until USDA conducts a transparent impact assessment, engages meaningfully with farmers and frontline staff, and demonstrates that proposed changes will strengthen, not weaken, service delivery.

The past year has shown how deeply USDA’s ability to serve the public depends on a strong and stable workforce. As we end this series, the path forward is clear: rebuilding staffing, restoring transparency, and ensuring that any administrative reforms center the needs of farmers and rural communities. 

The post USDA Staffing Crisis: A Year of Losses and the Road Ahead appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.