Farmer Leaders Rebuke USDA Officials Over FSA County Staffing Levels

The organization that represents Farm Service Agency (FSA) county committees nationally is pushing back on claims by top USDA officials that local offices have enough staff to implement new farm bill programs.

In a news release, the National Association of Farmer Elected Committees (NAFEC), the group reiterated that FSA offices "are critically understaffed," yet USDA officials have publicly denied those concerns.

Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden at the Farm Progress Show in late August rejected the notion FSA offices are short on staff. Vaden said USDA would not be asking for temporary or permanent FSA staffing levels.

Still, leaders at NAFEC said leaders at FSA in recent meetings have indicated staffing levels of county office employees are now under 6,000, as compared to several thousand more, just a few years ago. There are more than 2,000 local USDA Service Centers nationally.

"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, said Jim Zumbrink, President of NAFEC, and a grain and turkey farmer from Ohio. "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."

Since coming into office, the Trump administration has pressed to cull probationary employees from USDA and offer buyouts to senior staff across the department's agencies. Still, USDA leaders have maintained that services to farmers would not be affected by these staff reductions.

USDA officials, including Vaden, recently cited the speed FSA offices issued disaster payments as the reason FSA offices are not understaffed.

NAFEC, however, stated that USDA officials "failed to give an accurate picture of what it takes to get to the point of issuing payments. A full years' worth of work in FSA offices allowed the administration to quickly send out checks, based upon all of the work already performed in 2024 and 2025. For the new programs, this work is yet to be performed, and FSA cannot just send out checks for new programs without having on file acreage reports, eligibility forms, farm record updates, leases, etc."

It should be noted that the Biden administration first began providing aid to producers based on their acreage and crop insurance reports to reduce the time needed to submit applications for disaster aid.

Source: DTN