Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins defended her record at a wide-ranging House Agriculture Committee hearing this week that touched on trade, personnel reductions at USDA, and cuts to nutrition programs. She repeatedly mentioned her travel abroad and attempts to open foreign markets to U.S. farm goods and said, as she has before, that the previous administration had vastly increased the workforce at USDA, making it necessary to cut back. The department has lost about 15,100 employees through buyouts this year, raising concerns that some vital functions of the department will be hampered. But in response to criticism that the cuts have gone too far, she said, “We are adequately staffed to meet our mission.”
The majority of the of those roughly 15,100 USDA employees who accepted buyouts from the Trump administration worked outside the national capital region, ensuring that the department's downsizing will reverberate in communities across the country, according to deferred resignation program (DRP) data obtained by Agri-Pulse. Those leaving include conservationists who help farmers draft plans to address natural resource challenges, rural housing specialists and researchers working to detect toxins in grain. Ag’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost just over 2,400 workers, representing more than 20% of the roughly 11,600 employees NRCS employed at the end of the last fiscal year. Rural Development lost more than 1,500 employees, which accounts for 32% of its September workforce.