USDA Focused On Restaffing County Offices

USDA says rebuilding staffing levels in local FSA and NRCS offices remains a priority. 

“I mean I hear a lot as well around staffing in the county offices, both FSA and NRCS. And we're working hard to try to staff up in those county offices," said Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Richard Fordyce.  "We believe that we have a really good tool that can inform where that staff needs to be. Just on that staffing piece, we know that we can come up with the policies, we can make the decisions in Washington [D.C.], we can kind of chart the course about the direction that we want to go and then the things we want to prioritize. But if we don't have those folks in the county office, I mean, they're the rubber where the rubber meets the road, and they're the ones that get the work done.  They're the ones that actually offer that exceptional customer service to the folks that we serve.”

Fordyce stressed that those staff members interacting with farmers and ranchers are critically important for the Department of Ag.

“We're doing everything we can to try to get those offices restaffed," Fordyce said.  "You know, it takes a little bit of time, you know, we lost a lot of folks in a pretty quick fashion. It takes a little bit of time to get folks back in there. But we're working really hard to get that done.”

It’s estimated that FSA lost nearly 2,000 employees between 2024 and the middle portion of this year.

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