Other Ag News:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Tel. 347.563.6408

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.

### 

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.

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

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.

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 the only 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. 

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.” 

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.

(Washington, D.C., September 30, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will provide more than $531 million in Congressionally mandated recovery assistance to Georgia agricultural producers through a block grant agreement with the Georgia Department of Agriculture (GDA) to help producers recover from Hurricane Helene.

Small and mid-sized meat and poultry processors play a critical role in supporting resilient regional food systems by providing livestock farmers with a wider range of processing options and by providing more local and regional animal products for consumers. On April 30, 2025 a bipartisan group led by Senator John Thune (R-SD), Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Representative Jim Baird (R-IN) reintroduced the Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA) in both chambers of Congress to help grow this sector.  SLPA  provides much needed support for small and mid-sized meat processors by providing grants, technical assistance, and workforce support to expand capacity, improve food safety, and strengthen regional food systems. 

One of the ways that SLPA supports the development of small and very small meat processors – defined by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) as having fewer than ten or 10-500 full time equivalent employees, respectively, is by incentivizing maintenance and uptake at the state level of an already-established program: the Cooperative Interstate Shipping program (CIS). CIS allows states with their own meat and poultry inspection programs to allow state-inspected meat to ship across state borders and even internationally, helping farmers and regional processors expand their markets.. This simplifies market access by eliminating the need for additional federal inspection of plants in participating states.

 More than a decade after its creation, only a handful of states and processors have successfully joined CIS. SLPA would help promote the expansion of CIS by:

1. Requiring the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to conduct outreach to states with state inspection programs that are not part of the CIS program, and to submit a report to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees each year detailing the activities and the results of the outreach conducted.
2. Increasing the share of total program costs that the USDA will cover from 60% to 80%.
3. Increasing the size of plants that are eligible to participate from plants with fewer than 25 employees to plants with fewer than 50 employees.

Together with the other aspects of the SLPA, the expansion of CIS builds more regional markets for farmers and consumers.

This blog post examines the most recent data on CIS participation, reveals just how underutilized the program currently is, and why Congressional action through the Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA) is needed to fulfill the full potential of the CIS.

The CIS program was created by Congress in 2008 to give small meat and poultry processors more market access without requiring them to obtain USDA inspection. Instead, plants operating under a state inspection system can ship across state lines if their state opts into the program and the plant is certified by FSIS.

Despite the flexibility it offers, participation in CIS remains limited, in part because FSIS does not currently promote the program. Just 163 plants nationwide are participating in the program and only 9 of the 29 eligible states (31%) currently have any plants enrolled in CIS.

Over the last several years, during the annual government funding cycle, both agencies, the President, and Congress have noted the need to increase funding for this program to prevent insolvency and strengthen the relationship between the federal government and states. In the FY24 and FY25 appropriation processes, Congress included report language that stated the importance of this program. 

Recently, USDA took some small steps to ensure the continued solvency of the program for several states, utilizing the Non-Recurring Expense Fund to help many states reach the mandatory 50% cost share. 

Yet, with support from the SLPA, there is massive potential for CIS. Nationally, there are 2,133 plants with fewer than twenty employees and 2,614 plants with fewer than 50 employees, according to the 2022 County Business Patterns data from the US Census Bureau. With the larger plant size cap and the mandated outreach of the SLPA, the number of CIS plants nationally has the potential to grow more than sixteen times its current scope. 

Even among the twenty nine states currently eligible for CIS, the enrollment of plants is low and would benefit from all the additional support the SLPA offers: increased cost share, and promotion of the CIS program. Currently, among plants with fewer than 20 employees in those eligible states, only 12% participate in CIS. This limited participation is not due to a lack of need—but to administrative and structural barriers.

Small and mid-sized processors are vital to regional food security and rural economies, and support from the SLPA could help amplify their impact on rural communities. According to 2022 US Census Bureau County Business Patterns data:

• Processors with fewer than 20 employees account for 2,133 facilities, employing more than 13,500 workers, and generating $564 million in annual payroll.
• Processors with fewer than 50 employees account for 2,614 facilities, supporting more than 28,634 jobs, and generating over $1.34 billion in annual payroll.

If CIS participation were expanded, these small plants could grow their customer base across state lines, invest more in operations, and potentially create new jobs in rural communities. 

By shifting inspectors out to state agencies, and eliminating some overhead in FSIS inspection and payroll, Meat and Poultry Inspection Program (MPI) and CIS programs often lead to lower costs for the same level of inspection, as statutorily required. More research, especially through the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or other congressionally mandated research would be useful in understanding whether there is further savings to be gained at the federal level by comparing inspection costs between CIS plants and federally inspected plants. 

While there is more research needed, the current positive economic impacts of MPI-CIS, and the greater economic potential for the program, make a compelling case for both expanding participation by modestly increasing size caps and expanding state incentives to participate in it.

Nationally, twenty nine states are eligible to participate in CIS because they have established a Meat and Poultry Inspection Program (MPI) and maintain “at least equal to” FSIS regulatory standards. The eligible states are spread across the Midwest and Southeast, with a smattering of eligible states in the Northeast and the West. Of the eligible states, only nine have plants currently participating in the CIS program. 

The CIS program has been embraced most fully in a handful of Midwestern states. Ohio leads the country with 48 participating plants, followed by Wisconsin (33), Iowa (27), and Indiana (23). These four states alone account for over 80% of all CIS plants.

The majority of eligible states—including major agricultural producers like Texas, Missouri, and Minnesota—have no participation in the program. This is not for lack of processing infrastructure. For example: Texas has 165 processing plants with fewer than twenty employees and another 46 with between twenty and fifty employees, yet no Texas plants participate in CIS. 

The following map illustrates this mismatch, showing the number of small plants not enrolled in CIS—even in states eligible to do so. A darker color means more unused potential for CIS.

The insufficient support and underutilization of CIS underscores the urgent need for broader reforms to support small and mid-sized processors. The Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA), introduced in Congress with bipartisan support, addresses several of these barriers head-on. SLPA takes several steps to support small and mid-sized processors, as it:

• Provides grant funding and technical assistance for small processors to expand capacity, meet regulatory requirements, and navigate programs like CIS.
• Invests in workforce development, helping processors recruit, train, and retain skilled workers in processing.
• Supports state-level infrastructure, including increasing minimum cost shares to MPI programs and the supplemental Cooperative Interstate Shipment, as well as the size (measured in full time equivalents) of plants that can apply to be in it

Together, these and the many other reforms included in the SLPA would not only make the CIS program more accessible but also help ensure that local processors are not left behind in a rapidly consolidating meat industry.

The post A Potential Opportunity for Small Processors and Rural Jobs appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.