March 23, 2026 – According to a new analysis, 144 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) county offices lost all of their conservation staff in 2025, prompting questions around who will assist farmers looking to enroll in popular programs that boost farm resilience and improve the environment.
The analysis, shared first with Civil Eats, was conducted by Prospect Partners this month and is based on updated data released by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in early March.
OPM shared data in January that showed the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost nearly a quarter of its staff since President Donald Trump took office, but the latest data shows for the first time how much staffing has been lost at the county level.
Most NRCS staff work outside of Washington, D.C., in local offices, where they act as the agency’s “boots on the ground.” They visit farms and work closely with farmers to identify appropriate programs and practices and help with complicated paperwork.
The data shows that in 2025, a little more than half of about 2,400 total counties experienced overall net losses in NRCS staff. In addition, 139 counties no longer had any staff in three roles key to on-farm conservation work—soil conservation, soil conservation technicians, and general natural resources management—by the end of last year. Of counties that had staff at the start of 2025 dedicated to rangeland management—critical in the Western United States—one in four no longer have anyone in that role.
Bernie Kluger, a former USDA official who completed the analysis at Prospect Partners, said the lack of staff could impact the agency’s ability to launch new programs, such as the NRCS Regenerative Agriculture Pilot, which was announced in December.
“Given the launch of the new MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] program focused on regenerative agriculture, this [staffing issue] becomes mission critical to the agenda of the White House,” he said. “You can’t give regenerative agriculture advice for Idaho with somebody on the phone from Florida.”
The lack of staff will likely disproportionately impact small farms with the fewest resources, Kluger said, since those farmers often need more help accessing programs.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment on this new data and its implications.
At the launch of a new network called American Farmers for Conservation on Capitol Hill last week, multiple farmers from states around the country said they had been encountering NRCS staff shortages at local offices.
John Painter, an organic dairy farmer from Tioga County, Pennsylvania, said that in the past, NRCS staff had been tremendously helpful to him, especially in utilizing conservation programs to improve his grazing and water systems. Now, he said, employees in his local office are tasked with covering three counties at once.
In a meeting with House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), Painter said he and other farmers brought up the issue. “G.T. said absolutely he was concerned, and he would talk to the administration about it,” he said. Thompson’s office did not respond to a request for comment. (Link to this post.)
The post Nearly 150 USDA County Offices Have No Conservation Staff, New Data Shows appeared first on Civil Eats.
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