White House pitches layoffs, local office closures and program eliminations at USDA

The Trump administration is planning to severely scale back or outright eliminate funding for many programs across the Agriculture Department, according to White House documents obtained by Government Executive, as it slashes workers and closes offices at the local level. 

The “passback” document from the Office of Management and Budget proposing fiscal 2026 funding levels would gut research and conservation efforts, trim program budgets nearly across the board and cut staff as part of what OMB called “many difficult decisions” that “were necessary” to reach the proposed spending level. The document assumes savings from upcoming layoffs at USDA, including those at the Farm Services Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service, and calls for “protecting the American people by deconstructing a wasteful and weaponized bureaucracy.” 

The proposed cuts come as USDA is planning to gut its Washington headquarters, consolidate mission areas and administrative functions and relocate some staff to new “hubs” around the country. Thousands of employees are expected to receive reduction-in-force notices, though the impact of those cuts could be mitigated by the 16,000 employees who have already accepted the department’s “deferred resignation” offers. 

The passback document, which is considered “predecisional” and subject to change, assumes the cost savings associated with USDA’s RIF and reorganization plan. Passbacks serve as OMB’s response to agencies’ individual budget submissions. The Congressional Research Service has noted agencies can appeal certain programmatic decisions to OMB, but the documents generally serve as the White House office’s final decision.

In the document, OMB directed USDA to develop plans to consolidate its local, county-based offices around the country into state committees that would service the FSA, NRCS and Rural Development. Those three agencies employ nearly 20,000 workers and one official who helps oversee them said the change would lead to office closures at the county level. 

“That would be laying off those county employees that USDA has," that official said. "Ironically, these are the people that are directly where the farmers are." 

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins last month called those agencies, along with the Risk Management Agency, “the most farmer-facing mission area at USDA,” which “producers rely on every day.”  

OMB suggested the Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, which provides management and shared services to FSA, NRCS and RMA, will have less work to do going forward "given the reduction of staffing proposed" for those agencies. ​​FSA would see its salaries and expense account cut by 22% under the OMB suggestion as the agency modernizes the customer experience and implements "a smaller footprint of FSA county offices."

Zachary Ducheneaux, who served as FSA administrator for four years until January, likened the Trump administration's approach to a beef cattle producer starving his cows to boost efficiency and then getting rid of them when those results, predictably, do not occur. The plan, given FSA's scope of work assisting farmers across the country, is "really short-sighted at best." 

“In all of my travels in the last four years, I have never heard any single producer say, ‘We have too many damn staff in [USDA] offices and we hate them,’” Ducheneaux said. 

He predicted farmers who do not have private sector options will wait longer to get federal loans and federal personnel will miss deadlines set in statute and regulation because “there is not enough time in the day.” That will fail to satisfy congressional Republicans, he added, who criticized the Biden administration for taking too long to provide key services to their constituents. 

Among the other cuts the Trump administration is looking to implement at USDA would be eliminating forest and rangeland research as currently conducted by the U.S. Forest Service. Government Executive previously reported USDA planned to slash research at USFS and eliminate research stations as part of its RIF and reorganization plan. It would also eliminate a program that provides state, private and tribal landholders with funding to help prevent and fight wildfires. NRCS would slash funding for its Private Lands Conservation Operations by $773 million, though OMB said some of those cuts would be offset elsewhere in the budget.