While the longest federal government shutdown in US history has finally ended, its impacts on farmers, families, and communities nationwide are complex and ongoing. No two government shutdowns are identical since each Administration makes their own determination about what essential services and staff will continue to operate during the shutdown. Some federal services remain in operation, while many others go dark, though there is a consistent throughline – the longer a shutdown lasts, the more severe the disruptions become. 

In a previous post, published near the start of the shutdown, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) outlined how the pause in government operations and furlough of employees at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) would impact agricultural programming and many important functions of the government, such as farm loan application approvals, conservation program reimbursement processing, appeals of terminated grant funding, and ensuring that vulnerable families receive nutrition benefits. 

In this post, we highlight specific examples of how farmers and other food and agriculture stakeholders across the nation were impacted by the 43 day lapse in government services. The post concludes by examining how other changes at USDA – from staffing cuts to a proposed reorganization – can interrupt services in much the same way as a government shutdown, underscoring the need to center farmers, their families, and the most vulnerable in our communities in all of the Department’s decisions.

Conservation Assistance

A core part of USDA’s mission is to preserve natural resources through conservation. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) works with farmers across the nation to implement conservation practices that make farms more self-sufficient and resilient. During the shutdown roughly 95% of NRCS staff – which had already been drastically reduced – were furloughed, resulting in significant disruptions. Most conservation programs involve financial incentives, but are typically structured to require the farmer to pay out-of-pocket and receive reimbursement later. This, combined with razor thin production margins, means any delays in payment processing not only add to the stress farmers are already experiencing, but threaten farm viability. For example:  

• Molly, a rancher at MoSo Farms in Ohio, shared that they were owed $4,000 for a conservation contract with NRCS. During the shutdown, USDA personnel could not come to her farm to confirm that the work was carried out as agreed upon in the contract. “We could really use this cash right now during our most lean time of the year when we’re paying for over $30,000 in processing fees to have our more than 50 hogs and 10 cattle butchered,” she explained. 
• Lindsay, who farms at Trouvaille Farm in Ohio, was unable to communicate and coordinate with NRCS during the shutdown. They were expecting another $5,000 from NRCS for a Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) contract but could not get any information from their NRCS officer, who was presumably furloughed. To make ends meet, she found herself having to put expenses on a personal credit card.

Farm Safety Net 

Another vital function USDA provides is resources to support farmers as they navigate external factors like droughts, natural disasters, and market volatility. Most of these services are administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA), which furloughed 67% of its staff during the shutdown. Farmers reported being unable to access payments allocated for disaster assistance and being unable to complete loan applications, leaving them in the dark about the status of their application and adding to their financial stress and uncertainty. For example: 

• Antonio submitted an FSA loan application before the shutdown, and then received a response asking him to address a few things on his application with a new deadline of October 15th. After resubmitting the revised application, he received no response from FSA staff. At the time of this writing, he has not heard back and presumes the application is still in queue as incomplete. 
• Jane, of Wheelers Orchard, a fruit farm in Tennessee, reported having been awarded an Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) contract in addition to the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), which provides financial assistance to farmers growing crops that are ineligible for traditional crop insurance. “We had crop failure in our orchard and are waiting for our NAP insurance payment, which is now in hold.”
• Celeste, of Free Range Flowers in Washington shared that they rely on an annual $50,000 FSA operating loan to get them through the slow, cold season. She pointed to what this means not just for their operations, but their workforce as well. “We are not able to predict how we will staff in 2026, which leaves our coworkers adrift.” Her story highlights the thin margins on which small and mid sized farms operate and how critical it is to have a responsive and well-staffed USDA to timely process loan applications. Her story also illustrates how connected USDA services are to a strong and robust agricultural workforce, which is essential for farm viability and longevity.

Nutrition 

The shutdown delivered significant impacts that delayed and reduced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for children, the elderly, and our most vulnerable community members. A lesser known result of a SNAP benefits lapse is the impact to farmers and small food retailers. There are several USDA programs that are designed to leverage nutrition benefits to increase both access to healthy, high quality local food and improve local farmers’ bottom line. When nutrition benefits are cut, farmers experience that impact. For example:

• Caroline, of Chez Nous Farm, a fruit and flower farm in Ohio, said the government shutdown was impacting her on a more personal level. She is a SNAP benefit recipient while those funds were also suspended. Her farm demonstrates how to produce the best food while also caring for the entire ecosystem and all its components. As a responsible and ethical land steward she has an active CSP contract, but the NRCS conservationist she works with had been furloughed. Her annual payment was suspended until federal employees return to work. It’s not uncommon that farmers and farm owners, with thin profit margins and revenue varying significantly month to month, also rely on federal benefits like SNAP. 
• Bradley runs a small certified organic vegetable farm called Full Hollow Farm in Michigan. They proudly use earth-friendly, sustainable growing practices to encourage biodiversity and soil health. They typically see about $500-$800 worth of produce purchased with SNAP at farmers markets each month, and anticipate taking a serious financial hit in November due to the government shutdown and SNAP benefits being delayed. 
• Carine, of Sun Tracker Farm, a diversified vegetable and egg farm in California, was concerned about the impact the lapse in nutrition benefits would have on both her and the community at large. As she wrote in the Napa Valley Register, it “will mean a hit in our sales, and for many of our fellow farmers,” and that “people will go hungry without programs such as CalFresh,” California’s state SNAP program.
• The lack of reliable access to USDA services does not only impact farmers. The Broad Street Food Pantry’ in Ohio anticipates increased demand from folks in need of food, but few opportunities for them to increase the amount of food available. Food banks are intended to be short term support for families who need assistance to get back on their feet. As community needs grow in size and urgency, food banks may not be able to meet the demand, which we could prevent through intentional investments in USDA resources and capacity.

We Can and Should Prevent Further Harm 

Now that the federal government and USDA have reopened and resumed normal activity, essential services for farmers and food and agriculture stakeholders are once again widely available. However, other ongoing changes at USDA still threaten to impact services for farmers.

USDA will continue to carry out the massive reorganization plan proposed this summer, which they claim will, “consolidate, unify, and optimize functions within [the Department].” As NSAC has noted, the reorganization proposal was developed without input from farmers and other stakeholders, raising significant and legitimate concerns about how it will impact USDA program and service delivery. Without meaningful stakeholder input and significant revision, we are deeply concerned that the damage done during the shutdown will be compounded if the reorganization moves forward as proposed. USDA must take the time to ensure that programs and service delivery for farmers and stakeholders will not be further disrupted by gathering public input through a fully transparent process and fully assessing potential impacts before moving forward with any proposal. We can and must do better by our farmers.

Unfortunately, the proposed reorganization isn’t the only ongoing threat to essential services for farmers – since January 2025, USDA has significantly reduced its  staff across the Department – roughly 20,000 employees have left USDA. Every agency at USDA has experienced staff resignations and separations. Some have been hit particularly hard, like the Rural Development mission area losing 36% of its staff, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) losing at least 22% of its staff.

The funding bill that was enacted in November to reopen the government provided USDA with funding to last through the end of the fiscal year 2026 on (September 30, 2026), but did not take action to mitigate or rectify the problems farmers faced during the shutdown or as the result of ongoing changes at USDA. These effects will continue to ripple throughout the agricultural sector and in communities across the US, and could continue to worsen without intervention. The stories highlighted here offer a glimpse into the acute impacts farmers, families, and communities experience when government programs and services are disrupted – impacts that stand to be exacerbated if USDA’s staff loss and reorganization plan proceeds unchecked.

The post Voices from the Field: The Real Costs of the Government Shutdown appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Several offices within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provide legal guidance, oversight, and accountability for actions the Department takes, and these offices have endured significant staff losses in 2025. Their work, though often invisible to the public, is essential for ensuring that USDA follows its own rules and those set by Congress. It makes the Department transparent, accountable to the public for its decisions, and ensures it treats farmers and other stakeholders fairly. The major staff losses these offices are experiencing threaten that work.

This post is the sixth in our ongoing series on the staffing crisis at USDA. It examines the massive cuts to legal oversight offices within the Department including the National Appeals Division (NAD), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR), the Office of the General Counsel (OGC), and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the impacts of the USDA’s planned reorganization. Together, these agencies provide different aspects of essential legal oversight and guidance for USDA and their staffing levels have been gutted in 2025.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) continues to call for long-term adequate USDA staffing levels and the opportunity for stakeholders to provide meaningful guidance on the proposed reorganization. Read NSAC’s comment on the proposed reorganization here. 

Steep Declines Across Key Offices

While each oversight office has a unique role and responsibilities within USDA, together they provide the legal structure and guidance needed to ensure that the Department and its staff function legally and ethically. The NAD (part of the Office of Hearings and Appeals) conducts impartial administrative appeals hearings for program decisions made by several USDA agencies. NAD is where an appeal would be handled if, for instance, a farmer believed that their conservation contract was unfairly terminated. OASCR ensures that both USDA stakeholders and employees are treated fairly and in accordance with federal civil rights laws. Any stakeholder or employee who believes that they have experienced discrimination or unfair treatment from a USDA agency or staff member can file a complaint with the OASCR, which will investigate and take appropriate actions, if needed. The OGC is an independent legal office within USDA that provides legal guidance to the Secretary of Agriculture and department staff. OGC provides guidance to ensure that all USDA programs and activities comply with federal laws and regulations. The OIG is an independent agency within the Department responsible for auditing agencies and investigating allegations of fraud, waste, or abuse within USDA agencies. 

These four legal oversight offices have seen significant staff losses in 2025. Each of these offices have smaller staffs than other USDA agencies and therefore have been particularly vulnerable to recent staff cuts. The hardest hit office has been OASCR, which has lost 33% of its staff since January 2025. The relatively small office (150 employees in September 2024, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)) lost 47 employees to the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and an additional 2 staff to other separations between January and March 2025. The DRP was a program created by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut federal staffing numbers by offering incentives for employees to resign. Separations can include firing, quitting, retiring, transferring to another agency, or other separation from an agency. The figure below shows the percentage of employees lost from each agency in 2025, including both the number who accepted the DRP and those who had other separations between January and March 2025.

Figure 1: Staff Lost to Both DRP and Separations (January-March 2025)

Losses Threaten Unfair Treatment and Delays

Each legal office at the USDA provides a different aspect of essential legal oversight and guidance to the Department and its agencies. Staff losses at these offices will ripple throughout all agencies of USDA and threaten the Department’s ability to serve all farmers and stakeholders fairly. 

The NAD oversees administrative appeals that farmers and other stakeholders may file when they disagree with decisions made by certain USDA agencies. In 2025, the NAD caseload has been exceptionally high due to the unprecedented number of signed agreements USDA has terminated. For example, in April 2025, USDA abruptly terminated over one hundred agreements under the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program, many of which appealed to the NAD. The NAD must hear each of these appeals, review the appropriateness of the decisions, and issue a decision. Access to fair and timely appeals is essential for program accountability and farmer trust. Fewer staff at NAD means higher case loads and longer wait times for resolution. These delays severely decrease the efficacy of this important avenue to ensure fairness for farmers; who may be irrevocably harmed by an agency action if its reversal is unnecessarily delayed. 

Losses to the OASCR are particularly troubling given that USDA has a well-documented history of civil rights violations. Perhaps most notably, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) was found to have discriminated against Black farmers in allocating farm loans and disaster payments in the Pigford lawsuit, settled in 1999 with USDA agreeing to pay more than $1 billion to complainants. Congress also authorized an additional $1 billion in payments to Black farmers for discrimination in 2010, a settlement often called Pigford II. 

OASCR is responsible for preventing – through training and oversight – these kinds of civil rights violations and for investigating and resolving complaints when they arise. OIG has frequently found that OASCR takes an excessive amount of time to process claims of discrimination and recommended increased staffing in OASCR. Higher OASCR staffing levels and funding was also one of the major recommendations from the USDA Equity Commission – which have now been scrubbed from all USDA websites – to ensure that they can process all civil rights complaints in a timely manner. These recent staff losses fly directly in the face of this and other recommendations to keep OASCR and legal offices adequately staffed.

OGC attorneys are the chief legal USDA officers. Fewer attorneys at OGC means that all processes at the Department will be slowed and the effects will ripple into all USDA agencies. Firstly, OGC attorneys advise USDA leadership on federal laws and regulations and represent USDA in court and administrative proceedings, defending agency actions and enforcing USDA regulations. With nearly 20% fewer OGC attorneys, OGC attorneys will be less available to enforce USDA regulations and staff will be stretched thin trying to review regulations and policies to ensure that they are legally sound. This will likely delay program revisions across all USDA agencies and increase the risk that USDA may adopt policies that do not comply with federal law. Ultimately, fewer OGC attorneys threatens all USDA programs and policies. 

Finally, OIG is an independent, non-partisan oversight body that promotes accountability and efficiency within USDA. OIG ensures that all of the other USDA agencies are operating effectively and efficiently and they investigate allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse. While OIG has seen the smallest number of staff losses, any losses to this office pose a major threat to their ability to provide essential watchdog services. Notably, in January 2025, President Trump fired USDA’s Inspector General (IG), the head of OIG, along with the IGs from sixteen other agencies. Ultimately, a federal judge found this firing to be illegal but stopped short of reinstating the IG. These disruptions to OIG and OIG staffing are deeply concerning. Without a strong watchdog, even well-intentioned reforms can falter. 

Every lost staff member takes with them accrued institutional knowledge and experience. The staff from legal agencies who separated from the Department between January and March 2025 had an average of 23 years of experience, according to data from OPM, and 32% of separated staff held a doctorate or the most advanced degree in their field, likely a Doctorate of Jurisprudence (JD), the degree held by attorneys. Staff in these legal offices are highly skilled with specialized knowledge that is not easily replaced. Every loss represents lost institutional knowledge that helps USDA better serve farmers and communities.

Reorganization Risks Deepening the Crisis

Extensive staff losses at USDA legal offices in 2025  have already threatened basic fairness and transparency.  USDA’s planned reorganization will further exacerbate these losses. On July 24, 2025, USDA issued a memo detailing a planned reorganization drafted without input from farmers or other stakeholders. The USDA reorganization plan includes major changes including consolidating all civil rights functions into OASCR and consolidating all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) management into OGC. These changes would significantly increase the responsibilities of those offices at the very time that they are experiencing unprecedented staffing losses. The planned shift of many USDA offices outside of the Washington, DC metro area also threatens to exacerbate staff losses as the Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins expects up to half of the Department’s DC area staff to leave the agency due to relocation. How will the OASCR with 33% fewer and OGC with 19% fewer employees, plus additional losses due to potential relocation, manage their increased responsibilities? Staff that are already stretched thin will be further burdened and the whole system of fairness for farmers will falter.

Rebuilding Capacity Must Be the Priority

These offices – the National Appeals Division, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office of the General Counsel, and Office of the Inspector General – uphold the rule of law within USDA. Their staffing losses threaten basic fairness, transparency, and due process at the “People’s Department.” Behind every percentage point of lost staff is a farmer waiting longer for their justice, a complaint left uninvestigated, or a new regulation left in limbo. Together these offices provide the legal backbone of USDA and staff losses that will only be exacerbated by the planned reorganization undermine the functioning of the Department and essential trust in government. 

NSAC calls for the immediate restoration of staffing for USDA’s legal and oversight offices, as well as transparency and stakeholder input for both the staffing plans and the proposed reorganization. USDA needs a long-term staffing strategy that better supports the mission of the Department and centers on fairness and transparency. 

The post USDA Staffing Crisis: Legal Oversight Cuts Undermine Fairness and Accountability appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

“I believe public service is my calling… The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) hasn’t received much coverage in the media, but they do important work in advancing American agricultural interests abroad. Given the current administration’s priorities, I thought they would double down on this mission by staffing departments like the FAS. However, despite receiving and signing an offer letter following an arduous interview and security clearance process, my offer was withdrawn before my start date.”
— Rescinded FAS hire

The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) is the branch of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) responsible for building international markets for US agricultural products and overseeing international trade negotiations. It is also the division responsible for supporting international food aid programs, producing detailed reports on international market conditions, and helping to ensure food safety for global agricultural markets. In a time of great economic uncertainty and the impacts of trade wars, the role of the FAS is more important than ever, but their staff has been gutted. 

Although NSAC’s primary attention is on domestic programs that serve farmers and rural communities, the staffing losses at the FAS reveal the same systemic problem affecting every corner of USDA: the erosion of public-sector capacity. The loss of highly trained staff at FAS reflects the same hollowing-out of USDA expertise that threatens the agency’s ability to serve farmers, rural communities, and sustainable food systems.

On July 24, 2025, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released memorandum SM-1078-015 announcing a proposed reorganization of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Created without consultation from farmers or other stakeholders, the restructuring plan follows a loss of more than 20,000 employees since the start of 2025 and creates the potential for thousands more additional staff to leave. After widespread outcry, the USDA opened an ad hoc opportunity for comment via email but failed to issue a formal Federal Register notice. The ad hoc comment period ended on September 30, 2025. NSAC continues to urge the USDA to make all submitted comments publicly available and to provide meaningful and transparent opportunities for stakeholder feedback to be addressed and incorporated. NSAC’s comment on the reorganization can be seen here. 

This post is the fifth installment in our series examining USDA’s staffing crisis and the effects of the proposed reorganization of the USDA. Previous posts discuss overall losses, the devastation of research agencies, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Farm Service Agency. In this post we discuss the loss of staff in the FAS and how it affects the farmers and communities who depend on a well-functioning USDA, whether for technical assistance, fair trade relationships, or access to reliable market information. 

FAS Faces Steep Staff Declines

The last decade has seen a steady decline in FAS staffing levels and the agency was hit hard this year by staff losses from the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and recent staff separations. Staffing levels at FAS peaked at just under 1,000 employees in 2010 before falling 25% to approximately 739 employees in September 2024, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). 

Figure 1: FAS Staffing Levels

Since January 2025, the FAS has lost an additional 19% of their staff from the already depleted numbers. The DRP was a program that offered federal staff incentives to voluntarily resign from their positions as an effort to reduce staff numbers. Overall, approximately 15,173 USDA staff left their positions through the DRP. 

FAS lost 15 staff members in the first round of DRP resignations in February 2025 and another 89 employees in the second round of DRP. In addition to the 104 staff members who left via the DRP, FAS also lost 40 more employees to other separations between January and March 2025, according to OPM. Separations can include quitting, retirement, firing, transferring to another agency, or other separation from the agency. This brings the FAS staffing levels to their lowest level in over twenty years, nearly 40% lower than their peak in 2010.

Eroding Institutional Knowledge and Mentorship

As seen in other USDA agencies, many of the staff losses at FAS were highly skilled and experienced employees. Employees who separated from FAS between January and March 2025 had an average of 26 years of service, according to data from OPM. These were highly experienced and specialized professionals with valuable institutional knowledge that supported the agency.

A senior staff member who left the agency via the DRP spoke of feeling pushed out before she was ready due to the uncertainty of her role’s future and the future of the agency:

“I didn’t plan to retire. I was planning to stay at least three more years…{but} the more I thought about it the more I realized I was coming to work extremely tense and more and more stressed out everyday and I didn’t want to do that. I came to this job because I love the work and believe in the work,” but she felt she couldn’t stay amidst an uncertain future. 

This senior member’s departure exemplifies the widespread impacts of losing experienced staff. She led a USDA-wide career coaching program to help public servants grow their career, provided a leadership course for midcareer foreign service officers, and mentored many younger staff. “I was trying to create leaders to be the change that we want to see. Authentic and communicative leaders for the future of the agency.” All of this mentorship and knowledge is lost when career employees leave or are forced out of the USDA. These losses and the institutional knowledge accompanying them are not easily reversible, and the reorganization of the USDA threatens to further exacerbate existing losses.

Reorganization Risks Deepening the Crisis

The loss of staff and institutional knowledge at FAS is emblematic of the broader hollowing out of USDA capacity. Staff losses contribute to low staff morale and declining ability to serve US farmers and stakeholders, and the reorganization drafted without stakeholder input will greatly exacerbate these losses. Unlike many other USDA agencies, FAS employees are overwhelmingly located in Washington, DC and surrounding areas (615 of the 739 employees in September 2024), with the remaining serving to represent US interests in foreign countries. The reorganization’s vague plans to move staff out of the DC region would be particularly disruptive to this agency that depends on interfacing closely with staff on the Hill and with other federal agencies outside of the USDA regarding international trade. 

The future of the FAS, as with every other USDA agency, is uncertain as the administration advances a reorganization plan without transparency and without meaningful input from farmers and stakeholders. Without decisive action to restore USDA’s workforce, the loss of institutional knowledge and public service capacity will continue to weaken the foundation of US agriculture.

The post USDA Staffing Crisis: Eroding Capacity Within the Foreign Agricultural Service  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The transition from one fiscal year to the next is not something that typically dominates headlines. In fact, as the calendar turns from September 30 to October 1 – when the federal government begins a new fiscal year – the less attention the better. Yet when Congress and the President are unable to reach an agreement on government funding, the start of a new fiscal year can bring with it tremendous impacts.

During a government shutdown some federal services will remain in operation, while others may go dark, and the longer the shutdown lasts, the more severe the disruptions become. This year, Congress and President Trump failed to reach an agreement to fund the government beyond September 30, 2025 – and as a result the government has largely closed. The President and Congressional Republicans have proposed to fund the government beyond September 30 with what’s known as a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) – simply put, to continue funding the government at the same level (H.R.5371). Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have called for a CR that funds the government and extends Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to prevent healthcare costs from skyrocketing for millions of Americans later this year (S.2882).

Access to critical services – such as reliable internet – can be challenging or even nonexistent in many parts of rural America. Unfortunately, this also extends to access to reliable and affordable health care. On average, individuals – including farmers – living in rural households are more likely to be uninsured. Yet the rate of uninsured adults under 65 in rural areas has dropped by nearly half since 2010, when the ACA was passed, and there’s reason to believe uninsured rates may have fallen even more steeply for farmers since the ACA’s enactment. Healthy, thriving farmers, families, and rural communities are a foundational component of a sustainable, just food and farm system – and ensuring that all Americans can access quality, affordable healthcare is a critical part of reaching that goal.

In addition to the government shutdown, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 – otherwise known as the 2018 Farm Bill – expired with the new fiscal year, bringing with it an additional set of uncertainties. The rest of this blog post explores the impacts of the government shutdown and the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill on farmers and food system stakeholders nationwide.

Government Shutdown

Whether you realize it or not, federal programs and services are a part of many peoples’ daily lives. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), with employees around the country currently totaling around 80,000, offers hundreds of programs in communities nationwide that support farmers and ranchers, rural businesses, and other food system stakeholders. With roughly half of USDA’s staff furloughed as a result of the shutdown, the impacts are sure to be felt widely.  However, these shutdown impacts cannot be viewed in isolation. In fact, for the nine months prior to the government shutdown, many of the programs and services that USDA offers have been under threat as funding has been frozen and abruptly – actions resulting in devastating consequences for farmers and rural communities. As with anything, context is important.

USDA has dramatically reduced its staff in recent months. Since January 2025, the Department has already lost at least 18,000 employees. More than 15,000 USDA employees left the department through the “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)”’s so-called Deferred Resignation Program (DRP). The DRP offered federal employees fully paid administrative leave through September 2025 if employees voluntarily resigned from their positions. Approximately 3,876 USDA employees accepted DOGE’s first round DRP offer, and an additional 11,298 USDA employees resigned in the second round of DRP. Many of these employees have years of experience and irreplaceable expertise. The staff losses are impacting research, conservation, the farm safety net, and more.  

Beyond staff losses, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced this summer a proposed USDA reorganization. This proposed reorganization was drafted without any consultation with farmers or other stakeholders. While the reorganization plan does not directly include planned layoffs or reductions in force (RIF), it would in all likelihood result in the loss of thousands more staff if office relocations and consolidations are carried out. Recent history shows that staffing losses directly reduce and delay USDA’s services to stakeholders. As of posting, the reorganization remains a proposal that has yet to be finalized or implemented. But if it is implemented as proposed, the impacts are likely to be severe, lasting long after the shutdown ceases. Find NSAC’s in depth comment on the reorganization here.

Finally, just prior to the start of the current government shutdown, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) distributed a memo to federal agencies encouraging them to consider firing employees during the government shutdown by specifically targeting staff who work on programs that were out of alignment with the President’s priorities. The memo was swiftly met with multiple legal challenges and as of posting, no RIFs have taken place during the current government shutdown. 

So, against the backdrop of broken funding agreements, staff firings, a reorganization proposal, and the spectre of more firings – all of which have either reduced USDA’s capacity to serve its stakeholders or threatened to do so – the federal government has shut down. This post looks at what that means for agricultural conservation, the farm safety net, nutrition, research, local and regional food systems, and food safety.

Broadly speaking, federal staff are only allowed to continue working during a shutdown if they are “excepted” – either they are somehow essential to the operations and mission of the agency, or their job is funded through a non-lapsed funding source. On September 30, 2025, USDA published its Lapse of Funding Plan, which details agency-by-agency shutdown plans, from furloughed staff to services that will lapse – and is the basis for our analysis below. 

Conservation

Roughly 99% of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) staff is located outside the National Capitol Region (NCR), which means they are overwhelmingly state-based to provide technical assistance directly to producers. Further, a significant portion – roughly a third – of the NRCS budget for that technical assistance comes from mandatory funding for conservation programs. In theory, this means producers should still have some limited access to NRCS staff and the financial assistance provided by conservation programs at this time. However, shutdown plans provided by the agency, and early reports from our members in the field, indicate the reality is far less clear. According to NRCS’ shutdown plan:

• 95.799% of the remaining 9,237 employees are furloughed. It’s worth noting that, prior to the shutdown, nearly 1 in 4 NRCS employees left the agency this year.
• Services continuing during a shutdown:
  • NRCS will continue agency operations using available funding, including fiscal year (FY) 2026 mandatory farm bill programs funds, as well as prior year carryover discretionary and mandatory funding, to implement NRCS services and programs at USDA service centers and offices.
• Services stopping during a shutdown:
  • Key operational activities such as processing of contract payments to farmers and ranchers, conservation planning activities, ongoing collaborative projects with key soil and conservation partners, and processing of payments for outstanding contracts and agreements 
  • Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) amendments in process of being signed are now further delayed.

The shutdown plan presents an inherent contradiction. It correctly claims NRCS has the needed mandatory resources to continue providing some level of service to producers, but furloughs nearly every single employee, making it impossible to do so. As a result, farmers will likely (or may have already) go without a planned annual payment, a reimbursement for work already completed, or certainty from NRCS on how to complete fall field work to remain in compliance with existing contracts. This approach is needlessly disruptive and burdensome for farmers who are facing the same dismal economy as their neighbors, but have elected to do the hard work of improving conservation efforts within their operation anyway.

Farm Safety Net

The Farm Service Agency (FSA) – the primary agency responsible for administering farm safety net programs – is broadly impacted by the shutdown with a majority of its staff furloughed. Staff in county offices around the country will be largely unavailable for farmers seeking to access loans, commodity and other program payments, and disaster assistance. At a moment when producers across the country are facing significant financial challenges, many programs designed to provide such economic relief will be inaccessible due to the shutdown. 

• 67% of FSA staff are furloughed
• Services Continuing During a Shutdown:
  • After 10 days of a shutdown, each county office will have one loan employee and one farm program employee on call to complete certain loan processing items: continuing liens, protective advances, and bankruptcy notification responses. 
• Services Lapsing During a Shutdown:
  • All disaster assistance payments, including remaining Supplemental Disaster Assistance programs
  • Processing annual CRP payments
  • Processing annual ARC/PLC payments 
  • Accepting and processing of new loans
  • Other credit or loan activities, including providing advance funds, obligating or closing direct loans previously approved, processing or approving debt settlement applications, processing guaranteed loss claims, and loan restructuring. 

Nutrition 

More than 40 million people and 29 million students rely on USDA nutrition programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and child nutrition programs. These essential nutrition resources will remain available during a shutdown, subject to the availability of funding. In this case, families will still have access to their SNAP benefits and schools will have access to foods through entitlement offerings; however, funding for WIC benefits is expected to run out very soon, impacting roughly 6 million pregnant people and parents with young children. 

• 91.7% of USDA’s Food and Nutrition (FNS) staff have been furloughed. 
• Services continuing during a shutdown:
  • FNS will designate staff to manage program administration of SNAP benefits between state agencies, but the number of staff available is unclear. 
  • School menus and purchases are largely planned before the school year begins. Schools should continue to have access to USDA foods and meal reimbursements since these funds are made available through a transfer of funds from Section 32, which can be drawn at any time. 
  • While it is reassuring that the majority of nutrition benefits will continue to be available for families and children, the extent to which these programs will run smoothly with so many staff furloughed is still unknown.
• Services lapsing during a shutdown:
  • While existing authorized vendors will be able to accept and benefit from SNAP benefits, USDA will not process any new applications for vendors seeking to accept SNAP or WIC applications. 
  • Additional technical assistance or support services, such as offering webinars, will not continue during a shutdown. This is particularly relevant for current Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant applications that are due in early December. 

Research 

The shutdown not only impacts the work USDA does that directly serves producers, but also the research that underpins every aspect of farm viability and success. USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics mission area – which houses the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Economic Research Service (ERS), National Agricultural Statistics Survey (NASS), and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) – is tasked with providing reliable scientific research, data, and analysis for America’s farmers, ranchers, rural communities, and other stakeholders. These research staff and sites provide the human capital and infrastructure for agricultural research, as well as data collection and analysis for commodities and rural communities. 

Many competitive grant programs within NIFA, like the Organic Research and Extension Initiative, Food Safety Outreach Program, and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, are already running nearly a full year behind their normal grant cycle even prior to the shutdown. The shutdown will further delay the agencies in opening up funding opportunities for these programs, exacerbating uncertainty for farmers and researchers who are already reeling from frozen and terminated funding agreements since the start of this Administration.

• 69% of ARS Staff Furloughed
  • Services continuing during a shutdown:
    • Protection of human and animal life as well as research property and data where significant damage could result
    • Research on Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, New World Screwworm, and other vital research needs that are essential to protecting public health and safety
  • Services stopping during a shutdown:
    • Citrus Greening
    • Animal/crop production and protection projects and food safety research 

• 94% ERS Staff Furloughed
  • No public facing work at ERS will continue during shutdown
  • ERS will suspend almost all program activities. ERS publications, website updates, and data products, will be suspended during a lapse in appropriations

• 95.6% NIFA Staff Furloughed
  • Continuing: financial and grants management support as needed
  • All program activity will cease

In addition, 91% of NASS employees and the entire Office of the Chief Scientist, except for the Chief Scientist themselves, are furloughed, along with a suspension of all NASS data releases. 

Local and Regional Food Systems 

Unlike other agencies within USDA, staff and operations at the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) – one of the primary agencies that supports local food system efforts – are largely funded by associated program fees and mandatory farm bill funding. As a result, many AMS programs and functions can continue during a shutdown. The status of other programs utilizing funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) remain unclear. 

However, this is not the case for Rural Development (RD). While the RD budget is small in comparison to AMS, it runs a number of impactful business development programs with staff located in every state. This includes the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Plant grant Program and the Value-Added Producer Grant program, among others. 

• 8.72% of AMS staff are furloughed.  
• Services continuing during a shutdown:
  • A number of activities that allow for products to reach markets, such as food product grading and specialty crop inspections, will continue uninterrupted. 
  • Commodity and food purchases, directed by FNS and other agencies, will continue. 
  • There are a number of Farm Bill programs that have mandatory funding, such as the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Programs, that should be unaffected.
• Services lapsing during a shutdown include:
  • Grant programs funded by annual appropriation
  • National Organic Program; Country of Origin Labeling; Packers and Stockyards Program; Pesticide Data Program; National Bioengineered Food Disclosure  
  • Other programs not funded by mandatory funds may also halt such as the Meat and Poultry Processing Technical Assistance program or the Local Meat Capacity grant program 
• 83% of Rural Development (RD) staff have been furloughed. 
• Services continuing during a shutdown:
  • The extent of activities that will continue will be those focused on protecting government assets or property. In this case, that includes home and farm loan programs, in which the government has a vested interest in collecting payments from borrowers. 
• Services lapsing during a shutdown:
  • Although RD programs are authorized by the farm bill, the majority of business development RD activities are funded through annual appropriations and as a result will stop during a shutdown. These include programs such as the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program, Rural Business Development Grants, and Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA). 
  • Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP) grants that have not been fully paid out are likely paused.

Food Safety

A large portion of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s staff, with their core missions of food safety, are exempted or excepted from the shutdown. However, even within this core mission, many of their services are reduced, defaulting to a more reactive position. Across both agencies, non-mandatory policy initiatives – such as those that provide extra guidance to small farms or small processors – will be paused. While these activities are not mandatory, they are of critical importance to those small businesses that rely on them. 

Across both agencies, state cost-share funding will follow the model of federal activities and  narrow in on key inspection activities as well. It is unclear from the contingency plans of both FDA’s Human Foods Program and FSIS whether the overall payment of these state cost shares will cease, though the FSIS contingency plan does mention the potential for this to happen whereas the FDA does not. 

The lapse in support for services and programs that benefit small farmers and processors means that parts of the industry often most in need of tailored support may feel the impacts of the shutdown disproportionately, further delaying needed progress in food safety improvements. 

• 7% of FSIS staff are furloughed.
• Services continuing during shutdown:
  • FSIS will continue to perform mission-essential food safety operations required to protect life and property, including statutorily required inspection of meat, poultry, and egg products, investigations necessary to protect public health (outbreaks, recalls, etc.), laboratory work essential to identifying public health concerns and threats, emergency preparedness, and minimum levels of other support functions necessary to maintain these activities. Additionally, mandatory administrative work related to the shutdown will also continue. 
• Services stopping during the shutdown: All functions not required to directly or indirectly support the protection of life and property will cease. This includes non-essential administrative tasks, training other than mandatory training for frontline inspectors, and other support activities.
  • Cooperative Agreements for Inspection Services: States may run out of funds to perform key inspection services. A total of 29 states run Meat and Poultry Inspection (MPI) programs. 
  • Policy initiatives, including those that impact small and very small plants, are stalled.

According to FDA’s lapse plan, 13,872 (86%) of FDA staff will be retained, including 10,740 (66%) who are exempt from furlough because their activities or position are already funded or otherwise exempted and 3,132 (19%) who are excepted because their activities are deemed necessary by implication or for the safety of human life or protection of property).

• Services continuing during shutdown:
  • All FDA activities related to imminent threats to the safety of human life or protection of property would continue. This includes detecting and responding to public health emergencies and continuing to address existing critical public health challenges by managing recalls, mitigating drug shortages, and responding to outbreaks related to foodborne illness and infectious diseases. It also includes surveillance of adverse event reports for issues that could cause human harm, the review of import entries to determine potential risks to human health, conducting for cause and certain surveillance inspections of regulated facilities, and related regulatory testing activities, and criminal enforcement work and certain civil investigations.
• Services stopping during shutdown:
  • Food safety efforts within FDA’s Human Foods Program (HFP) are reduced to safety surveillance and emergency responses. Longer-term food safety initiatives, including policy work to help prevent foodborne illnesses and diet-related diseases, would be halted, jeopardizing public health.
  • FDA will be limited in the number and type of inspections to be conducted, unless the inspections are for cause or otherwise necessary to detect and address imminent threats to the safety of human life, or can be conducted with carryover user fee funding.

Office of Hearing and Appeals – National Appeals Division

USDA’s National Appeals Division (NAD) is an independent office that presides over appeals of adverse decisions stemming from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Farm Service Agency, the Risk Management Agency, and Rural Development. When a farmer or other stakeholder disputes a decision made by one of those agencies, they generally may appeal the decision to NAD for review and potential reversal. 

During the shutdown, 100% of Office of Hearing and Appeals (OHA) staff are furloughed and all NAD proceedings are postponed. Given first the funding freeze and then the unprecedented and abrupt cancellation of countless agreements between the USDA and farmer-serving organizations under this Administration, the shutdown will further delay farmers and other stakeholders from obtaining the relief they seek. When the government reopens, there will likely be additional delay resuming postponed proceedings given how many appeals have been filed under the Administration challenging the lawfulness of recent decisions, on top of NAD’s regular docket.

Farm Bill Expiration

Amidst all of the uncertainty outlined above, it would be understandable if you lost track of the farm bill’s status. While the 2025 budget reconciliation bill (OBBB, P.L. 119-21) reauthorized some programs from the traditional farm bill, it excluded the vast majority of farm bill programs, leaving them to an uncertain future. Consequently, on October 1, 2025, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 – more commonly known as the 2018 Farm Bill – expired.

Close observers of federal food and agriculture policy will be familiar with the oft-repeated albeit misleading message that the impacts of an expired farm bill don’t really kick in until January 2026, with the start of the new crop year. While it is true that there are new and significant impacts beginning in the new year, the consequences of allowing the 2018 Farm Bill to expire without a replacement begin immediately.

Note: the farm bill expiration impacts discussed below are anticipated impacts when the government is funded and open. During a government shutdown, the impacts in this section are superseded by and in addition to the impacts of a government shutdown.

Conservation

With one major exception, key USDA conservation programs – Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Agriculture Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), and the Regional Conservation Program (RCPP) – should remain largely unaffected by the expiration of the farm bill. This is a direct result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which invested in and reauthorized these programs through 2031. However, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is not so lucky. 

Administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA), CRP conserves and improves soil, protects water quality, and provides wildlife habitat by establishing long-term cover on highly erodible land or land in need of conservation buffers that has previously been in row crop production. In exchange for cost-share and rental payments, farmers remove environmentally sensitive land from production and plant resource-conserving land cover to protect soil, water, and wildlife habitat.

CRP’s statutory authorization lapsed along with the rest of the farm bill on September 30, and therefore no new work can occur within that program without action from Congress to extend the prior or reauthorize a new farm bill. Effective as of October 1, 2025: 

• FSA will not approve new CRP contracts for any signup types
• FSA will not process offers for enrollment in CRP for all signup types
• FSA will not authorize any CRP contract revisions or corrections
• Contracts that were approved on or before September 30 will receive annual rental and cost-share payments, and signing incentive and practice incentive payments, as applicable.

Local and Regional Food Systems

Due to NSAC member advocacy during the 2018 Farm Bill, many local and regional food system programs now have permanent mandatory baseline funding and therefore should not see a significant interruption following the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill on October 1, 2025. However, for programs such as the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), that have not yet awarded FY2025 Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program and Regional Food System Partnership Grants, it’s possible that grant cycles could be interrupted during the lapse in authorization. For the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP), while states should be able to finish programming without interruptions for the remainder of the 2025 season, the programs’ operations could be impacted in calendar year 2026 if there is a significant delay in a farm bill reauthorization or extension.

Organics and Research 

A handful of critical farm bill programs are funded without mandatory “permanent” baseline funding, meaning that without a provision that specifically offers continued funding, funding for the programs would expire when the farm bill expires. Despite its faults, OBBB provided additional funding for several of these formerly “stranded” programs, meaning they will remain funded during a short term lapse in farm bill authority.

One such program is the National Organic Certification Cost Share Program (OCCSP), which supports farmers with their annual certification costs. The Organic Production and Market Data Initiatives (ODI) and Scholarships for 1890s Institutions also both received additional funding through OBBB and should not be impacted by the lapse in authorization. 

Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach

The Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach (FOTO) program, which is a combination of the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program (BFRDP) and the Outreach and Assistance to Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (2501), was created in the 2018 Farm Bill in part to secure mandatory baseline funding for both 2501 and BFRDP. Many competitive grant programs within NIFA, like FOTO, are already running nearly a full year behind their normal grant cycle and saw no RFA for the FY25 grant cycle. Despite mandatory funding for the program continuing, the statutory authority for the grant program lapsed on October 1, 2025. Therefore, like LAMP discussed above, absent an extension or reauthorization, the next grant cycle may be interrupted.

Farm Safety Net

By and large, the farm safety net – ranging from credit to crop insurance and commodity programs – should continue to operate with little interruption through the end of 2025. 

The Federal Crop Insurance Program – which is permanently authorized and funded at such sums as necessary in perpetuity by Congress – will continue to function without interruption in the absence of a farm bill reauthorization or extension. Permanent disaster programs, including the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program and programs to support livestock and fruit tree producers, are also authorized to continue. 

The farm bill also permanently authorizes USDA to make and guarantee loans, for which money is allocated by Congress in the annual appropriations process. Failure to reauthorize or extend the farm bill is not likely to impact the availability or servicing of farm loans. 

Several commodity programs – including Price Loss Coverage (PLC), Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC), Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC), and marketing assistance loans – were amended and extended through 2031 in the 2025 budget reconciliation bill. Changes to reference prices in ARC/PLC will be implemented for the 2025 crop year, with payments calculated on these new reference prices set to be administered in Fall 2026. 

However, if the farm bill is not reauthorized or extended by January 1, 2026, these commodity programs will begin to be replaced with “permanent law,” or non-expiring provisions established in the 1938 and 1949 Farm Bills. The first commodity to be impacted is dairy. While the reconciliation bill amended these commodity programs, a suspension of permanent law was not included in the final legislation. Therefore, a reauthorization or extension of the farm bill prior to January 1, 2026, is necessary to prevent these programs from reverting to permanent law.

What’s Next

This year has presented farmers with an unprecedented set of obstacles to navigate. While there is a long way to go, the final months of 2025 nonetheless offer an opportunity to bring much needed stability after months of chaos – by ending the government shutdown, enacting FY2026 agriculture appropriations, and passing a farm bill extension if a strong and fair farm bill cannot be achieved this year.

The post How the Government Shutdown is Impacting Farmers appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

*Despite the current government shutdown, these RFA’s will remain open, and the review process will continue. If the timeline changes, NSAC will update this blog post to reflect that.

Since 1988, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program has funded more than 9,380 farmer-driven research and education initiatives through competitive grant awards totaling nearly $478 million. As the only farmer-driven, sustainable agriculture competitive research grant program offered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), SARE provides farmers and researchers with vital opportunities to better understand agricultural systems and to increase profitability and build resilience to climate change. SARE-backed initiatives have furthered land and natural resource stewardship by funding research on topics such as soil health management, crop and livestock integration, soil erosion and runoff mitigation, and organic farming practices. In addition to research, many SARE projects also address social and demographic challenges faced by farming communities, including those encountered by underserved farmers, access to land, obstacles for young and beginning farmers, and rural quality of life.

SARE is administered through four regional councils of producers, researchers, educators, and government representatives. SARE regions include: North Central, Northeast, Southern, and Western. These regional councils are responsible for setting SARE policies and grant making processes. Because each of the SARE councils designs and administers their own regional grant programs, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) provides a periodic aggregation of funding opportunities and other activities from across the regions in our “SARE Roundup.”

Each of SARE’s four regional programs administers three primary grant programs: Research and Education (R&E), Professional Development Program (PDP), and Producer Grants. Some regions also offer additional grants for community innovation, graduate student research, agricultural professionals conducting on-farm research, and region-specific initiatives.

Read on for details about what is going on in your SARE region!

North Central SARE

NC-SARE currently has four grants open for proposals: the Partnership Grant, the Farmer Rancher Grant, the Research and Education Grant, and the Professional Development Grant.

The Partnership Grant Program is intended to foster cooperation between agriculture professionals and small groups of farmers and ranchers to catalyze on-farm research, demonstration, and education activities related to sustainable agriculture. NC-SARE anticipates funding 20 projects this year, with each project receiving up to $50,000. Projects are funded for up to 24 months and typically involve three or more farmers or ranchers. University educators, including extension agents and specialists, NRCS field staff, agricultural consultants, and nonprofit or agency staff assisting farmers and ranchers at the local level can apply for this grant program.

The deadline for the Partnership Grant Program is November 20, 2025 by 4:00 pm CST. 

Farmers and ranchers have critical insight when it comes to improving their systems. Whether they need to limit off-farm inputs, reduce erosion, create more time for family or community activities, learn marketing skills, or find other ways to enhance their livelihoods, farmers and ranchers can turn to the Farmer and Rancher Grant Program for grant opportunities and information. In 1992, NCR-SARE began a competitive Farmer Rancher Grant Program exclusively to fund farmers and ranchers striving for agricultural sustainability.

NC-SARE anticipates funding 40 Farmer and Rancher Grant Program projects this year. Projects must be completed in 23 months, and award limits vary based on grant team size: individual grants can receive up to $15,000, teams of two or more grants can receive up to $30,000. 

The deadline for the Farmer Rancher Grant Program is December 4, 2025 by 4:00 pm CST.

The NCR-SARE Research and Education (R&E) Grant Program is a competitive grant program for researchers and educators involved in projects that explore and promote environmentally sound, economically viable, and socially responsible food and/or fiber systems.

Research and Education projects include a strong outreach component and significant farmer/rancher or other end-user involvement from the inception of the idea through the implementation of the project. NC-SARE anticipates funding 16 R&E Grant Program projects this year. Projects must be completed in 36 months, and grant awards range from $10,000 to $250,000.

The deadline for the Research and Education (R&E) Grant Program is December 4, 2025 by 4:00 pm CST.

The Professional Development Grant Program supports state professional development programs and competitive grants for training agricultural professionals. Professional Development Program (PDP) competitive grants emphasize training agricultural educators in extension, Natural Resources Conservation Service, private, and not-for-profit sectors, using farmers as educators and addressing emerging issues in the farm community. Applicants are educators who often represent but are not limited to, Extension, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and non-profit groups. PDP competitive grants are awarded for state and multi-state PDP projects that emphasize cross-agency training, using farmers as educators and addressing emerging issues in the farm community. 

NC-SARE anticipates funding 10-12 PDP projects this year. Projects may last up to 36 months, and grant awards are made up to $120,000.

The deadline for the Professional Development Grant Program (PDP) is November 5, 2025 by 4:00 pm CST.

For a list of NC-SARE grants funded in your region search the SARE database.

Northeast SARE

NE-SARE currently has one grant open for proposals, the Farmer Grant Program.

Northeast SARE offers grants to farmers to explore new concepts in sustainable agriculture conducted through experiments, surveys, prototypes, on-farm demonstrations or other research and education techniques. Farmer Grant projects address issues that affect farming with long-term sustainability in mind.

Competitive proposals explore new ideas and techniques or apply known ideas in new ways or with new communities. Reviewers look to fund projects that are well-designed to meet proposed objectives and promise the greatest benefit to farming communities.

Awards typically range from $5,000 to $30,000, depending upon a project’s complexity and duration. Projects that are more complex include multi-farm collaboration, intensive education for other farmers and/or service providers, and/or replicated research over multiple years or locations. Simpler, straightforward proposals with modest budgets are equally encouraged.

The deadline for Farmer Grants is December 9, 2025 by 5:00 pm EST. Northeast SARE Farmer Grant Administrator Candice Huber will be hosting a series of drop-in Q&A sessions from Noon to 1:00 pm EST on Tuesdays in November. Sessions will take place on: Nov 4, 11, 18, and 25. You can register for a Q&A session here.

For a list of NE-SARE grants funded in your region, search the SARE database.

Southern SARE

S-SARE currently has three grants open for proposals: the Research and Education Grant, the Professional Development Program Grant, and the Producer Grant.

Research and Education Grants are competitive research grants for teams of interdisciplinary researchers that encourage a systems approach in sustainable agriculture.

S-SARE offers three categories for Research and Education Grants: production research, postharvest-food systems research, or a continuum that spans both.

• Production research—Focused on actual production methods, this kind of research has made up the bulk of SARE’s project portfolio in the past and has developed techniques that have become common tools for farmers. SSARE continues to fund these types of research proposals as they provide key parts of a larger holistic system, particularly as they relate to farmer participation in our program and complement the Producer, On-farm, Professional Development, and Graduate Student grant programs.
• Postharvest/food systems research—These projects examine what happens past the farm gate such as in the markets, distribution systems and policy making. This category can serve as a funding path for social science researchers to also make a difference in our farm and food systems.
• A combination of production and postharvest/food systems research—While some research can be separated into production and postharvest levels, we also seek to encourage attempts to provide integration of the different levels of the agricultural system, as well as the different sciences that lend more value to the results. The ultimate in systems research would connect what goes on in the ground with everything that happens after a crop is harvested, including adding value, marketing, infrastructure for processing and transportation, as well as policy making.

Research and Education Grants require a two-step application process: A pre-proposal application process and a full proposal application process for those invited by the review committee to submit a full proposal. Research and Education Grant project maximums are $400,000, limited to three 3 years.

The deadline for Research and Education Grants is November 21, 2025 by 12:00 pm EST.

Professional Development Program Grants, known as train-the-trainer grants, are available to help further education and outreach strategies for ag professionals and ag educators who work directly with farmers and ranchers.

The grant funds training activities that educate ag professionals in up-to-date strategies and technologies to help farmers and ranchers increase profits and lessen environmental impacts. PDP grants support such activities as producing workshops, creating educational manuals and videos, or conducting on-farm tours and demonstrations.

The application process for Professional Development Program Grants requires a pre-proposal, followed by a full proposal for those applicants invited to submit one by the regional review committees. One or two year projects can be funded up to $100,000. 

The deadline for Professional Development Program Grants is November 14, 2025 by 12:00 pm EST.

Producer Grants support farmers and ranchers in developing sustainable production and marketing practices. The goal of the program is for farmers and ranchers to conduct projects to solve challenges and problems they face and develop information on what works and does not work, so that others facing those same problems can benefit from the results of the funded project. Any farmers or ranchers and farmer/rancher organizations throughout the Southern region are eligible to apply, and the maximum funding amount for individual farmers/ranchers is $20,000 and $25,000 for farmer/rancher organizations. Project duration is for 2 years.

The deadline for the Producer Grants is December 5, 2025 by 12:00 pm EST.

For a list of S-SARE grants funded in your region, check out these examples in the SARE database.

Western SARE

W-SARE currently has five grants open for proposals: the Research and Education Grant, the Professional + Producer Program Grant, Framer/Rancher Program Grant, the Professional Development Grant, and the Local Education and Demonstration Grant.

The Research and Education Grants involve scientists, agricultural producers, and others using interdisciplinary approaches to advance sustainable agriculture at local and regional levels. With the collaboration of producers, projects must integrate rigorous research and education aiming to advance the three components of sustainable agriculture- environmental, economic, and social- and use innovative educational outreach to disseminate new knowledge to students, producers, and other agricultural stakeholders. 

Projects must incorporate research and education, and bring together a team of researchers, students, ag professionals, and producers. Project budget is $350,000 maximum, with project length 1-3 years.

The deadline for Research and Education Grants is November 10, 2025 by 5:00 pm MST.

The Professional + Producer Grant Program involves agricultural technical advisors (main applicant) and producers implementing projects to address identified needs in sustainable agriculture. With the collaboration of at least three producers, projects must integrate research and education aiming to advance the three components of sustainable agriculture- environmental, economic, and social- and use innovative educational outreach to disseminate new knowledge to producers and other agricultural stakeholders.

Project budget is $85,000 maximum, with project length 1-3 years.

The deadline for Professional + Producer Program Grants is November 20, 2025 by 12:00 pm MST.

The Farmer/Rancher Grants Program supports agricultural producers (main applicant) working with technical advisors in implementing projects addressing identified needs in sustainable agriculture and conducting outreach on the topic. Producers and technical advisors must integrate research and education to conduct on-site/on-farm experiments to improve production, marketing, and the environment. Both research and education components must be distinct elements of the proposal. The goal of this program is to find ways to protect the environment, enhance farm income, and improve the quality of life for farming/ranching families, communities, and society as a whole. 

Farmer/Rancher projects are limited to $35,000 with project length 1-3 years.

The deadline for the Farmer/Rancher Grants Program is November 20, 2025 by 12:00 pm MDT.

The Professional Development Grants Program focuses on training agricultural professionals to help them spread knowledge about sustainable agriculture concepts and practices. Projects should increase agricultural professionals’ sustainable agriculture knowledge, skills and action, and they should have outreach plans demonstrating delivery of knowledge. 

Projects can be up to 3 years (36 months) in length and funded up to $100,000.

The deadline for Professional Development Grants is November 20, 2025 by 12:00 pm MST.

For a list of W-SARE grants funded in your region search the SARE database!

SARE Application Process

SARE proposals must be submitted online via this portal. Once submitted, proposals are reviewed by a Technical Review Panel against the criteria outlined in the grant’s open call and in comparison, with other submitted grant proposals. The SARE Administrative Council for the region – typically, a board of agricultural producers, scientists, educators and business leaders – then makes the final selections of projects to fund. The Council typically selects proposals that are diverse in subject matter and geography, and that demonstrate outcomes that farmers and ranchers in the region can successfully adopt.

SARE publishes a summary of funded projects by state. The portfolio summary breaks down funding by SARE project type and total funding per state since 1988, and the grant list includes every grant awarded in the state by title.

Find out more about SARE projects in your state here.

The post SARE Roundup: Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program Opportunities appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Editor’s Note: This blog post is a guest post authored by the National Farm to School Network, which is an NSAC member.

The Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program has had an incredible reach, providing $100 million in awards to 1,275 projects since 2013. On September 10, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it was opening applications for the FY 2026 Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program. National Farm to School Network applauds USDA for this new launch, especially after two key farm to school programs were canceled in March: the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program and the $660 million Local Food for Schools and Child Care (LFSCC) program. LFSCC, which directly funded food purchases from local farmers, has not returned. The Patrick Leahy Program supports farm to school efforts broadly but offers little funding for local ingredients.

We would like to thank all the legislators who expressed concern and asked questions to USDA Secretary Rollins through a joint letter and through multiple hearings. We also want to thank our local and state partners who shared their stories about the impact of the recent cut and advocated for its continuation.

We are also incredibly grateful to USDA for making farm to school a priority, which was featured in the agency’s recent Small Family Farms Policy Agenda. We urge USDA to continue to find ways to bolster local procurement, school gardens, and agriculture education. Farm to school is truly a triple win for our nation’s farmers, kids, and communities.

The Good News: 

There’s ample time to submit gather and submit an application
Farm to school champions have just under three months – until December 5th – to submit applications. 

There’s up to $18 million on the table
USDA has shared it will award up to $18 million, subject to availability of funds. While this amount is less than what we hoped given the cancellation of the $10 million fiscal year (FY) 2025 cycle, if fully awarded, this would be the largest annual round of awards since the program began in 2013!

USDA is providing more technical assistance that ever
This technical assistance takes the form of a webinar and several office hours:

*Edit: The government shutdown on October 1 will likely affect USDA’s office hours—it is unclear whether they will be postponed or cancelled.

• Webinar: October 1, 2-3pm ET [register here] *cancelled due to the Oct 1 government shutdown. Please stay tuned for updates.
• Office Hours: All sessions will be held from 2:00-3:00 PM Eastern Time on:
  · October 8, 2025 (Click Here to Join)
  · October 21, 2025 (Click Here to Join)
  · November 5, 2025 (Click Here to Join)
  · November 18, 2025 (Click Here to Join)
  · December 2, 2025 (Click Here to Join)

Major Changes in the Request for Applications (RFA):

Partnerships are now required (with some exceptions)

While project partnerships were common in previous award cycles, the FY 2026 RFA now requires applicants other than State agencies and Indian Tribal Organizations (ITOs) to apply as a partnership. A partnership is a group of three or more entities, including a coordinating entity, that will participate in the proposed grant project. All projects must include at least one child nutrition program (CNP) as a partner.

We’re glad to see USDA affirm that strong partnerships are the foundation of successful farm to school programs. However, the new mandatory CNP partner regulation may cause some hardship for some. Projects not specific to CNPs, such as research or solving broader problems, will now have to shift. For example, work that focuses on food supply chain innovations or providing training to farmers may be constrained. In addition to producers, the CNP partnership requirement may also present difficulties for early childcare sites that do not participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) due to burdensome paperwork or regulations. If these sites want to submit a proposal, they will need to adjust their project ideas to include an official CNP partner and then secure one, even though they already feed children every day. That feels like a tall ask for two groups that are already stretched thin.

Finding partners and ensuring proposals meet these guidelines may require extra time and intentionality. Please refer to NFSN’s state partner map or connect with your own state’s farm to school network if you need assistance finding project partners.

Projects must be at least $100,000‍

Increasing the project proposal floor to $100,000 marks a truly dramatic change. Since 2013, 97% of previous grant awards representing 88% of funding have been for under $100,000. Before this, there was no project request floor and the award cap was increased from $100,000 to $500,000 just in 2022 for multi-state or multi-Tribal projects. The award cap for the Turnkey Grant track, which spanned 2021-2024, was even smaller, at $50,000. ‍

The Match: Providing a 25% match has always been a barrier to participation. As the cost of a project increases, so does the match. Page 15 of the RFA explains the formula: If the federal grant request is $100,000 (the new minimum), this means applicants will have to provide a match amount of $33,334, bringing the total project cost to $133,334. 

While creating high-award and high-impact grant projects makes sense to streamline operations at USDA, it is likely that many small-scale projects and smaller-size applicants will be excluded from this grant opportunity. Many rural schools may not want to request $100,000 for a project, even if they could afford the match. Additionally, there are less than ten states that have established and funded similar competitive farm to school grant programs at the state-level. This will leave a large gap for funds to seed farm to school programs, especially for the Southeast, Mountain Plains, Southwest, and Midwest regions.

Therefore, applicants must be more intentional about project partners for their applications this cycle. Multiple small projects can team up to form larger cohesive proposals, and applicants with greater capacity can reflect on how they are able to step up for grassroots partners through regranting or partnership.

Equity scoring criteria is removed

The FY 2025 cycle was canceled because the grant’s scoring criteria added bonus points related to equity. Therefore, it’s no surprise that this was removed from the FY 2026 cycle.

Specifically, the previous RFA added up to seven bonus points for racial equity priorities, including tribal organizations, and organizations led or staffed by people of color and serving communities of color. This scoring boost wasn’t limited to racial equity. Up to three bonus points went toward small-to mid-size producers and producer groups, child nutrition programs in rural areas, and projects that serve high proportions (40%+) of students that are eligible for free and reduced breakfast.

While NFSN recognizes that diversity, equity, and inclusion measures are explicitly not part of the Trump Administration, these bonus points helped level the playing field for many different kinds of communities that have historically faced discrimination. ‍

Removal of grant tracks

Previous cycles included multiple grant tracks: State Agency, Implementation, and Turnkey (further subdivided into Agriculture Education, Edible Garden, and Planning tracks). This RFA removes all grant tracks.

While this ‘streamlining’ may have some benefits such as giving more freedom to applicants, it also may come with some unintended consequences. With multiple tracks, it is easier for grantors to earmark certain funds for specific purposes or groups to ensure fair or strategic distribution. The Turnkey track (which allowed awards of up to $50,000) was also designed to be more plug-and-play for applicants new to farm to school or looking to engage in small projects. The elimination of the Turnkey grant track and the increased award minimum will make it harder for these applicants to apply. 

To Wrap It Up:

National Farm to School Network is thrilled at the launch of the FY 2026 Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Cycle. This funding is critical to support the growth of farm to school programs across the country. With three months to develop proposals and additional technical assistance from USDA staff, we are looking forward to seeing how the up to $18 million will get awarded. 

The key changes this round include: (1) requirement for partnerships for non-state agency and Indian Tribal Organization applicants, (2) new request minimum of $100,000, and (3) removal of equity bonus point scoring criteria, (4) removal of grant tracks.  

The new FY 2026 structure has the potential to support large-scale, ambitious projects that can transform farm to school. However, it also risks leaving out smaller initiatives that have long been the backbone of this movement. Ensuring project proposals meet the new partnership requirements and navigating partnerships thoughtfully and equitably will be key to ensuring that all communities have a chance to benefit from this funding.

Our organization has created a dashboard with visualizations and descriptions of the 1,275 grant projects awarded thus far – $100M since 2013! While there are significant changes in this grant cycle, our dashboard can help you learn more about successful projects and find out who was awarded in your area.

‍Collaborate with NFSN On Your Project:

‍NFSN is excited to work with our partners on joint proposals, ranging from a main partner to a small consulting role. If you are interested in teaming up with NFSN for a project, please email one of our staff members or email info@farmtoschool.org.

The post Guest Blog Post: The Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant FY 2026 Cycle is Open! appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: NSAC Presses for More Details, Better Process on USDA Reorganization

Washington, DC, October 1, 2025 – Yesterday, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) submitted a comment outlining concerns with the proposed US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reorganization plan detailed in Secretary Memorandum 1078-015.

In its comments, NSAC emphasized that while it supports USDA’s stated goals of enhancing effectiveness, accountability, and service delivery, the current proposal was made without input from farmers, lacks sufficient detail, and risks undermining core functions of the agency. NSAC warned that the plan could destabilize agricultural research, conservation programs, technical assistance, and access to critical components of the farm safety net.

“Our members, more than 170 grassroots organizations representing family farmers, ranchers, and rural communities, are deeply concerned that this reorganization could worsen the challenges many producers are already facing,” said Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director, adding: “We urge USDA to revise its approach and engage meaningfully with stakeholders to ensure reforms strengthen, rather than weaken, the Department’s ability to serve our nation’s farmers, ranchers, and the broader public.”

The letter was submitted electronically to reorganization@usda.gov as part of the public comment process, which closed yesterday.

Read NSAC’s full comment here.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC):

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/

The post Release: NSAC Presses for More Details, Better Process on USDA Reorganization appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

On July 24, 2025, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released memorandum SM-1078-015 announcing a proposed reorganization of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The proposal was drafted without consultation with farmers or other key stakeholders. Since the beginning of 2025, the agency has already lost more than 20,000 employees, and if implemented, the restructuring could trigger thousands more departures.

In response to a public outcry, USDA opened an ad hoc opportunity for feedback on the proposal. NSAC is encouraging farmers, advocates, and organizations to submit their perspectives on the proposed reorganization to reorganization@usda.gov by September 30, 2025. Still, NSAC remains seriously concerned that USDA has bypassed the standard practice of issuing a Federal Register notice to formally solicit public input on a change of this scale.

This post is the fourth installment in our series examining USDA’s staffing crisis and the ripple effects of the proposed reorganization. Here, we highlight staffing declines within the Farm Service Agency (FSA), where staff reductions threaten to undermine the agency’s ability to administer farm safety net programs, deliver disaster assistance, and provide critical support to farmers across the country. Our earlier posts looked first at overall USDA and state-level staff losses, the implications for the Department’s research agencies, and the loss of staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

FSA Staff Numbers Have Fallen for Two Decades

The Farm Service Agency (FSA) administers loans and payments to farmers and landowners, operating through a network of more than 2,000 state and county offices. FSA staff help farmers apply for loans, price support programs, income support, disaster recovery, and a variety of other financial support programs. FSA, quite literally, keeps the money flowing for millions of American farms and ranches. 

FSA employees include national, state, and county office staff. About ⅔ of FSA employees are county staff, working directly with farmers and landowners in local offices spread across the country. In 2024, for instance, approximately 7,168 employees were FSA county staff and approximately 3,402 were FSA state or national employees. 

Figure 1: FSA Staff in FY2024

FSA staffing levels have steadily eroded over recent decades. Even before the staff losses sustained during the current administration, the number of federal and state FSA staff declined by 43% between fiscal year 2005 and the beginning of fiscal year 2025. The number of county FSA staff declined by 22% during the same twenty year period. The National Association of Farmer Elected Committees recently sounded the alarm that there are now fewer than 6,000 FSA county office employees nationally, a 34% reduction from 2005 staffing levels. 

Figure 2: FSA Staff by Fiscal Year

Accelerated FSA Staffing Losses

The FSA has lost at least 1,200 additional employees just since January 2025. Approximately 499 FSA national and state employees and 674 FSA county employees opted to accept the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP). The DRP encouraged federal employees to resign from their positions in exchange for receiving full pay and benefits through September 2025. Approximately 88 additional FSA state and national employees separated from the agency between January and March 2025, according to OPM. Unfortunately, since FSA county employees are not tracked by OPM, it is unknown how many FSA county employees also separated from the agency during this new administration. 

Table 1: Recent FSA Staffing Losses

Altogether, the FSA is entering the 2025 harvest season with at least 12% fewer staff members than in January 2025 and at least 1,100 employees fewer than at the end of the first Trump Administration. Just as farmers and landowners enter a period projected to be extremely economically challenging, the agency that provides their federal financial support has been gutted. The FSA has struggled to administer payments to farmers under the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program of 2025 and the 2023/2025 disaster relief programs, and is navigating the extensive changes to the federal commodity payment programs that were part of the recently passed budget reconciliation process. In addition, there is a growing recognition that supplemental relief will be needed for producers impacted by tariffs, high input costs, and program cuts. The scale of such assistance, likely to be around $20-30 billion, will require significant FSA support to ensure any program is run effectively and payments reach all producers in need. At a time of extremely high demand, these staffing levels will cause distress for the agency and stakeholders.

Every State Hit With FSA Staff Losses

Since two-thirds of FSA employees are county staff, the impact of the DRP and staff separations has been felt in every state across the country. Amongst the FSA federal employees, states lost an average of 17% of their FSA staff to the DRP. Two states, Alaska and Delaware, lost 100% of federal FSA employees in their state to the DRP. The 674 county FSA employees who left their positions to the DRP were spread across 46 states, with Texas (59 employees), Iowa (37 employees), Georgia (36 employees), and Kansas (33 employees) losing the large number of FSA county staff. The map below shows the number of FSA staff lost in each state since January 2025, including both the staff who accepted the DRP and those who otherwise separated from the agency.

Figure 3: FSA Staff Lost to DRP and Separations

No state has been spared in the gutting of the FSA staff. States with small staffing numbers have been hit particularly hard, such as Alaska and Delaware which have lost 100% of their FSA federal employees.

Farming Stakeholders Express Their Distress With Staff Cuts

Recently, The National Association of Farmer Elected Committees (NAFEC) issued a statement expressing their distress and frustration with existing low FSA staffing levels. NAFEC President Jim Zumbrink said: “NAFEC has County Committee members in every county in the nation and the word we are consistently hearing is our county office staffs are critically understaffed…As such, our staff will find it very difficult to perform the complex work of the new Farm Bill, combined with Disaster programs and ongoing programs, with the speed agriculture producers in America, both expect and desperately need.”

Leaders at NAFEC shared that their local offices will be unable to administer existing safety net programs and the forthcoming changes from budget reconciliation and a potential new farm bill. “The new farm bill is going to require millions of new base acres to be established which is going to take a lot of work. We also know that ongoing programs like the Livestock Forage Program (LFP), critical to our nation’s livestock producers, is a program that takes a lot of staff time to administer,” said Kevin Dale, a retired county executive director from a large beef-producing county in Oklahoma. His Oklahoma county office staff has recently been cut from a staff of four full time employees (including one full-time temporary employee) to just two staff members. With those numbers, he says, “Issuing payments quickly under this program will be impossible, without additional staffing.” 

FSA staff are highly skilled with extensive institutional knowledge that is lost with these separations. For instance, staff who separated from the agency between January and March 2025 had an average of 18.6 years of service, according to OPM. The decades worth of  invaluable experience and institutional knowledge FSA staff carry is essential to serving stakeholders effectively and efficiently. Bob Braden, a NAFEC officer and corn and soybean grower from Iowa says: “With the recent buyouts, not only are FSA offices depleted of warm bodies, but a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience also walked out the door of our offices. Replacing this experience will take a good amount of time.”

NAFEC’s recent public outcry concerning FSA staffing levels follows a July 2025 letter to farm groups highlighting that FSA staffing levels were “already at a breaking point:” “With recent buyouts and early retirements, the staffing levels in our counties has never been lower. Already at a breaking point, we are now faced with having to develop base acres on over 36 million new acres, as well as maintain all of the Title 1 programs that ensure a strong farm safety net. Frankly, we need your help if we are to be able to deliver the farm programs in the fast and efficient manner our producers have come to expect and deserve.” 

FSA Staff at a Breaking Point

The steady erosion of FSA staff, combined with the recent surge in losses, has left farmers and landowners with fewer resources and slower access to critical support just at the moment they most desperately need it. Rather than addressing this crisis, the Presidential budget includes massive cuts of more than $372 million to the FSA budget for the next fiscal year and plans to close many local offices. Deputy Secretary Vaden has said there are no plans to ask for either temporary or permanent increases in FSA staff levels, despite widespread stakeholder concerns. 

The proposed USDA reorganization will only further exacerbate this staffing crisis by driving even more staff out of the agency. Without a clear plan to rebuild FSA’s workforce, particularly at the county level where farmers most directly depend on assistance, USDA risks undermining the very programs that sustain farm communities in times of need.

The post USDA Staffing Crisis: Farm Service Agency Staff Losses Put Farm Safety Net at Risk appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

On July 24, 2025, US Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, issued memorandum SM-1078-015 outlining a proposed restructuring of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The plan was developed without meaningful engagement from farmers or other stakeholders. Since January 2025, USDA has already shed more than 18,000 employees, and the reorganization as proposed will likely drive thousands of additional departures.

Following mounting criticism, USDA created an informal channel for public feedback on the reorganization. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) urges farmers, advocates, and organizations to provide comments by emailing reorganization@usda.gov no later than September 30, 2025. However, NSAC remains deeply concerned that USDA has not followed the usual process of publishing a Federal Register notice for public comment, which is standard practice for proposals of this magnitude.

This piece is the third in a series exploring USDA’s staffing crisis and the potential consequences of the reorganization. Here, we focus specifically on staffing losses in the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and examine how staff reductions could weaken the agency’s ability to deliver conservation assistance and financial support to farmers and landowners across the country. Our first post in the series examines staff losses across the USDA and states and the second examines the scope and impact of staffing losses within the research agencies. 

A History of Staffing Decline in Vital Agency

NRCS is the primary agency within USDA that delivers on-the-ground conservation assistance to farmers, ranchers, and landowners. Through programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), NRCS staff work directly with producers to implement conservation practices that improve soil health, protect water quality, enhance wildlife habitat, and build resilience. NRCS provides both technical assistance and financial assistance programs. Technical assistance involves helping producers develop a customized conservation plan with suggested conservation practices that address their conservation goals. Financial assistance programs are voluntary programs such as EQIP and CSP in which farmers enter into contracts with the agency to provide financial assistance for adopting specific conservation practices best suited to their land and resources. 

Between 2005 and 2023, NRCS has provided $87.3 billion in conservation support to farmers and ranchers, with 61% of that spending ($53 billion) going directly to farmers in the form of financial assistance payments and 37% going to support technical assistance, according to data provided by the agency. 

Figure 1: NRCS Obligations by Type, 2005-2023

NRCS staffing levels have been steadily eroded over the past two decades. In 2005, the agency employed nearly 13,000 staff. By 2019, that number had dropped to just 8,914, a decline of more than 30%. Staffing partially rebounded in recent years, due in large part to dedicated efforts from the previous administration to hire and train new, young conservation professionals and improve producers’ customer experience. Total staff reached 11,623 employees in 2024, a major victory for producers who want faster service at the county level and more consistent access to technical experts. 

Both producer and staff sentiment on the need to have more hands on deck to complete paperwork and prioritize time spent evaluating resource concerns in the field have been well documented. A survey by the Soil and Water Conservation Society of conservation professionals – watershed coordinators, soil and water conservation district employees, NRCS District Conservationists, and NRCS Soil Conservationists – found that 90% of practitioners agreed that “high employee turnover among conservation practitioners negatively impacts conservation momentum.” Conservation professionals were clear: they were already understaffed before the recent losses. 82% of practitioners said that there was a need for “more capacity to provide farmers/landowners with technical assistance” and they consistently rated staff capacity priorities as the highest needs in their local offices. One practitioner reported: “We simply have more landowners coming into the local office requesting assistance with programs than is possible to assist without cutting corners with a soil and water district staff of two and USDA staff of two.” These concerns existed before the NRCS staff were gutted in early 2025.

Losses since January 2025 have brought the number of NRCS staff down to again approximately 9,000 employees, echoing the record lows of 2019 during the previous Trump Administration. The NRCS budget request for fiscal year 2026 calls for a reduction to just 8,000 NRCS employees. This short-sighted goal would leave NRCS woefully underequipped to disperse the historic increase in conservation program dollars provided by the recent reconciliation package.

Figure 2: NRCS Staffing by Year

_{*Current NRCS staffing estimate is based on the separations and DRP information. FY2026 staffing is based on the NRCS budget.}

Conservation Staff Have Been Wiped Out

The NRCS has lost nearly 1 in 4 of their staff since January 2025. The Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) offered buyouts and incentives to encourage federal employees to resign. At NRCS, 2,409 employees, 21% of the workforce, accepted the DRP. 560 NRCS employees accepted the first DRP in February 2025 and another 1,849 accepted the second round of DRP in April. 

In addition to the NRCS employees who left the agency via the DRP, an additional 182 employees (2 percent) separated from the agency in just the first three months of 2025, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. Separations include retirements (early, voluntary, or for disability), firing, failure to renew contracts, quitting, transferring to another federal agency, or other separation.

Altogether, nearly one in four NRCS employees have departed this year alone.

While the USDA has not publicly provided information on the staff who accepted the DRP, Charles Melton, a former staff member in the Office of the Executive Secretariat who himself accepted the DRP, estimates that it was primarily mid-career individuals with experience who left the department via the DRP: “What the DRP did was remove everyone who had twelve to fifteen years of experience or higher and took them out. It put a big donut hole in an organization that wasn’t fat to begin with,” Melton said. 

The loss of mid-career and experienced staff to the DRP echoes the losses seen following the relocation of the Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City, Missouri in 2019. This recent experience showed that it was largely the skilled employees with more than ten years of experience who left both agencies. By 2020, just 19% of NIFA employees had more than a decade of experience, down from over 50% before the relocation. At ERS, by 2021, just 37% of employees had more than a decade of experience, down from 71% before the relocation. 

These staff losses are not sustainable. They threaten NRCS’s ability to deliver timely, effective conservation assistance to farmers at a moment when demand for these services is growing. Annecdotally, NSAC members report NRCS field staff are often either late career or relatively recent graduates. This can prove quite challenging for producers seeking to adopt the most innovative conservation practices available, as younger staff tend to have less experience with agriculture itself, and staff approaching the end of their career may be unfamiliar with newer research on the effectiveness of certain practices. Capable mid-career field staff, with a mastery of natural sciences and a strong understanding of the realities of farming, are by far the most helpful to producers and the most difficult to maintain within NRCS’ workforce. If, as observers are beginning to warn, recent departures have indeed pushed out experienced staff, producers can expect several years of greatly degraded service from NRCS. NSAC strongly supports action from Congress and USDA to prioritize the hiring of mid-career staff and to make policy changes within NRCS that will attract and retain capable young professionals for long-term careers with NRCS.

Table 1: NRCS Staffing Losses 

NRCS Staff Losses Are In the Field

More than 99% of NRCS staff work outside of Washington, D.C.

The latest data from the Office of Personnel Management shows that just 105 employees out of the agency’s 11,623 staff in September 2024 worked in Washington, D.C. with the rest in offices around the country. These staff included 8,397 employees working as natural resource management or biosciences professionals and 1,313 engineers and architects. 

NRCS staff work in every state and territory, providing direct support to farmers and ranchers for their conservation planning and contracts, and every state has lost a significant amount of NRCS staff, as seen in the map below. Indeed, every state except three – Delaware, Michigan, and Arkansas – has lost more than 20% of their NRCS staff and 36 states have lost more than 25% of their NRCS staff.  

Figure 3: NRCS Staffing Losses

Staff Losses Exacerbate Farmer Wait Times and Service Disruptions

Low staffing levels and high demand from farmers and ranchers means that NRCS programs already have long wait times to enroll and many farmers who want to enroll are unable. Demand to participate in the conservation programs supported by USDA staff is extremely high, with tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers applying for contracts each year. Recent reporting by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) finds that less than 25% of the applications to the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) are granted contracts and only about 26% of the applications to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) are granted contracts. 

Even prior to this latest round of staff losses, NRCS staff were stretched extremely thin with very high workloads. The wait time between when a farmer or rancher applies to one of the NRCS programs and finds out if they were awarded a contract is usually six months and sometimes up to a year. Advocates, like those at NSAC member Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) that help farmers apply for NRCS funding, already encourage patience in navigating the process and caution farmers that it can be a long wait to find out if contracts are approved, and even longer before promised payments are actually received. 

The loss of NRCS staff is already being felt at many field offices and for farmers across the country. Speaking to public radio in Kansas City, a former NRCS district conservationist Jamey Wood said that: “Producers are requesting conservation plans so they can do better conservation work, so they can participate in conservation programs, so they can get financial assistance to help them do conservation…And now, and this is my estimate, you’re going to lose basically a generation of conservation planners.” Maine farmer Seth Kroeck told reporters at Civil Eats that the staff losses at his local NRCS office have threatened the technical support and contracts he has with the agency, saying: “There were two employees that were in that office that I’ve been working with directly on programs, and they’re gone…There were two engineers that were helping us on different irrigation contracts, and they’re gone. It’s kind of a mess.” 

Reorganization Amplifies Risks

The USDA reorganization plan threatens further disruptions to NRCS operations by consolidating its regional offices into five USDA hub locations, from where departmental agencies will be administered if the current reorganization proposal is adopted. Currently, the NRCS divides the nation into four regions, Central, Northeast, Southeast, and West. Each region is led by a Regional Conservationist, responsible for the agency operations, activities, and personnel in that region. 

Two of the four Regional Conservationist positions are currently vacant: the Central and Southeast regions. The planned USDA hubs in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah do not align with any meaningful natural resource regions or existing personnel divisions of the NRCS. Relocating regional duties to these new hubs will likely lead to further staff losses as employees choose not to relocate. This will also create further disruptions in the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission to serve farmers as they endeavor to protect our natural resources. 

What’s at Stake

Farmers and ranchers are facing unprecedented challenges. More frequent flooding and drought, degraded soil and water health, and intensifying economic pressures have placed America’s farmers and ranchers in extreme vulnerability. NRCS delivers both technical assistance and financial assistance to farmers and ranchers to tackle these challenges, but only if the agency has enough staff to deliver them effectively. 

Farmers rely on local NRCS staff to deliver conservation solutions tailored to their land, and staff losses and the reorganization risk hollowing out the agency as farmers enter a time of unprecedented crisis and need. For the foreseeable future, every dollar that ends up on a farmer’s statement of cash flow is going to matter, and that includes cost share dollars delivered through conservation programs. Now is not the time to weaken a single tool in a farmer’s toolbelt.

Beyond the money, conservation planning and practices can lead to reduced input costs for producers, making sound technical advice just as financially valuable to producers as direct cost share. NRCS needs to swiftly change course if it is going to provide both.

NSAC encourages all farmers, advocates, and organizations to share their concerns with USDA by emailing reorganization@usda.gov before September 30, 2025.

The post USDA Staffing Crisis: Conservation Staff Losses Will Further Undermine Services to Farmers and Ranchers  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Tel. 347.563.6408

Comment: Without Input from Farmers and Experts, USDA Reorganization Would Close Offices and Lead to Staff Reductions

Washington, DC, July 24, 2025 – On Thursday, July 24, the US Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced a reorganization of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The reorganization, announced through a 5-page memorandum, is short on details of how its proposals would improve the circumstances of farmers. The memorandum offers no timeline for the reorganization. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition issued the following comment attributable to Mike Lavender, Policy Director: 

“Without input from farmers, the proposed USDA reorganization would close offices and lead to further staff reductions – and ultimately farmers would pay the price. Improving USDA to better serve farmers and ranchers is a noble undertaking – but today’s announcement fails to connect the dots between a mass staff relocation and the resultant staff loss, and expanded economic opportunity for all farmers and ranchers. USDA should immediately pause the reorganization to gather public comment about what farmers and ranchers really need – and Congress should halt the reorganization until USDA can clearly demonstrate the benefit to farmer livelihoods from coast to coast.”

Since January 2025, nearly 2,000 employees have left USDA and an additional 15% have opted into the Deferred Resignation Program. This means a total of nearly 18,000 fewer USDA employees are now serving America’s farmers compared to earlier this year. Previous relocations of USDA offices, most notably the 2019 relocation of the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, led to years-long reduced output and lower staffing levels.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/

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