WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new analysis released by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) and Prospect Partners, LLC finds that the two federal agencies American farmers and ranchers depend on most for on-the-ground help — the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) — were among those hardest hit by USDA-wide staffing cuts in 2025, leaving farmers in hundreds of counties with fewer local experts to turn to and their access to critical programs and services threatened.
Drawing on U.S. Office of Personnel Management data and previously unpublished FSA County staffing records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the report documents the loss of roughly one in five USDA employees in a single year. The cuts fell heavily on the farmer-facing field staff who deliver conservation and farm programs in local communities — even as the immediate Office of the Secretary grew by 18%.
NRCS lost 23% of its workforce between January 2025 and January 2026, falling from 11,861 to 9,078 employees — a net loss of nearly 2,800 staff in a single year. The steepest losses hit the field staff who work directly with landowners: 711 Soil Conservationists — the primary staff who help farmers plan and implement conservation practices — along with 283 Soil Conservation Technicians.
141 counties that had NRCS staff in January 2025 had lost 100% of that staff one year later, leaving producers in those counties without local technical assistance. Remaining staff are now stretched across far larger areas. The largest losses by headcount were in Texas (144), Kansas (127), Missouri (105), Wisconsin (100), and Colorado (99). The steepest percentage losses were in Rhode Island (44%), New York (38%), Colorado (36%), and Maine (35%), with Kansas, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Florida each losing 34%.
USDA’s other farmer-serving agency producers rely on most for in-person service, FSA, has also been severely impacted by ongoing staffing cuts. FSA Federal staff fell 21%, from 3,284 to 2,604. Nationwide, 127 counties lost all of their FSA Federal employees, cutting the number of counties with any FSA Federal staff from 932 to 805. FSA County staff fell 8%, from 7,672 to 7,022 — the largest termination of FSA’s local community presence in over a decade. More than a third of local offices that began the year with FSA County staff ended the year with a reduced headcount, and 42 offices ended 2025 with no FSA County employees at all. The hardest-hit role was County Program Analyst — the staff who help producers complete their assistance and lending paperwork — with 614 positions lost. Local leadership was also depleted, with 122 County Executive Directors and 47 Directors-in-Training gone.
Prospect Partners’ analysis notes that staffing trends are likely to continue their decline in 2026 and beyond. The President’s FY2027 budget request for NRCS proposes to eliminate all discretionary funding for Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA) — the account that pays for the agency’s frontline conservation planners — cutting roughly $732 million and the 3,287 staff years it supported to zero. The budget states plainly that “no new discretionary funding is requested in 2027” for the program. In all, the White House budget request would cut NRCS’s discretionary Private Lands Conservation Operations account by about $739 million — from $850 million to $111 million, an 87% reduction — and reduce the account’s staffing from 3,864 staff years to 570.
Additional budget cuts and staffing losses should be expected nationwide and across all of the Department’s agencies. Last July, USDA announced an upcoming reorganization of the Department, which will relocate its agencies and staff from Washington, DC to other locations across the country. A survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found that 76% of its members do not plan to relocate — and would instead leave their jobs — pointing to deeper staffing losses ahead. USDA is nonetheless pressing forward with the move.
The full analysis, USDA Staffing Cuts Reduce Local Presence in Communities Nationwide, is available here.
