White House Budget Plan Proposes Local FSA, NRCS Office Closures

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, as it slashes workers and closes offices at the local level.

The ‘passback’ document from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 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.

In the document, the 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. 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.

(From the National Association of Farm Broadcasters)