The Agriculture Department's shutdown plan calls for furloughing more than 42,000 employees, or nearly half its current workforce.
With lawmakers in a partisan stalemate over funding the government in fiscal 2026, which starts Wednesday, USDA posted a FY26 shutdown plan that says 43,651 employees would remain on the job, including 30,955 deemed necessary to protect life and property. Another 11,493 would continue working because their jobs aren’t funded by annual appropriations bills.
Tuesday evening, the Office of Management and Budget directed all departments and agencies to begin executing their shutdown plans. The closures officially began at midnight.
According to the USDA plan, the work being suspended during a shutdown includes the “majority of Risk Management Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Foreign Agricultural Service, Food and Nutrition Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistical Service, Rural Development, and Staff Office activities.”
Specific activities that are stopping include payment processing, regulatory work, and “surveys for high-risk plant pests and diseases for certain swine, cattle, and aquatic animal diseases” and research on animal diseases.
The closely watched reports to be suspended during the shutdown include the monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, due to be released Oct. 9.
The plan also warns that during the shutdown, states may run out of funds to perform meat and poultry inspections under cooperative agreements with the agency.
On the other hand, farm loan processing will continue as well as meat inspections and animal and plant health emergency programs, including those for New World screwworm and highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The shutdown will hit farmer-facing agencies particularly hard.
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The furloughed employees include 6,377 of the 9,468 who work for the Farm Service Agency.
“Select FSA leadership at headquarters and state offices will be excepted on call to ensure continuity of operations in the case of a natural disaster response and to ensure the security interest of CCC,” the plan says.
“If a shutdown continues past 10 days, additionally, one farm loan employee and/or one county office farm program employee per service center will be excepted on call to complete certain loan processing items to protect the security interest of the government and to prevent the loss of security or loss of value to the borrower.”
Another 8,849 of the 9,237 employees of the Natural Resources Conservation Service are to be furloughed, although some work would continue using farm bill money and leftover funding.
By comparison, only 533 of the 7,614 people who work for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which regulates meat and poultry processing, are to be furloughed.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, pesticide registration work can continue during a shutdown because that activity is funded by fee revenue, according to a new plan posted by the agency.
Fees collected from companies under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act “are not subject to the annual appropriations process. Where funds are available in such accounts, they may continue to be obligated until it is no longer practicable to operate,” the EPA plan says.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated White House threats to carry out mass layoffs of furloughed workers during a shutdown. “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them [Democrats] … like cutting vast numbers of people out,” he said.
The Congressional Budget Office, citing estimates by the Office of Personnel Management, estimated that about 750,000 federal employees who collectively earn about $400 million a day would be furloughed during a shutdown.
The top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, Angie Craig of Minnesota, accused Republicans of instigating the shutdown by refusing to negotiate with Democrats over their demands, including an extension of health insurance subsidies.
“We are nearly a year into their majority and all we’ve got to show for it are trade wars, increased cost of living, worsening health care, higher unemployment and more hunger. Republican politicians need to start standing up to this administration’s terrible policies,” she said in a statement.
Updated Wednesday morning with the shutdown underway.
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