The Agriculture Department lost 18% of its staff to voluntary resignations, retirements and for other reasons during the first five months of the Trump administration, with some agencies losing up to a third or more of their employees, according to a report by USDA’s inspector general.
Some 20,306 employees left the department by June 14, including 15,114 who took the deferred resignation program offered by the incoming administration, according to the report.
Agri-Pulse reported in June that about 15,100 USDA employees had accepted buyouts, with more than 3,800 taking the first DRP offer and 11,298 taking the second.
According to the inspector general’s report, another 1,996 employees resigned department-wide, 1,280 retired and 1,636 were terminated. Some 175 took external transfers.
Rural Development was among the agencies and mission areas hardest hit by attrition, losing 1,745, or 36% of the 4,910 employees with whom RD started the year.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service lost 2,673 employees, or 22% of its staff.
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The impact on Farm Service Agency county offices was relatively muted. About 7% of the 15,837 employees the county offices had at the start of the year were gone by June. The rest of the agency lost 806 employees, or 24%, of its staff of 3,402.
The Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, an umbrella organization for FSA, NRCS, and the Risk Management Agency that coordinates communication, outreach, and collaboration among those agencies, lost 531 employees, or 33% of its total.
Among other large agencies, the Forest Service lost 16% of its staff, or 5,860 employees; the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service lost 25%, or 2,105 employees; and the Agricultural Research Service lost 23%, or 1,647 employees.
The proportional hit fell harder on some smaller agencies. The National Agricultural Statistics Services lost 275 employees, or 34% of its staff; the Economic Research Service lost 29%, or 84 employees; the National Institute of Food and Agriculture lost 35% of its staff, or 169 employees.
California saw the most attrition of any state, losing 1,268 total USDA employees. More than half that attrition was due to deferred resignations, while 267 were resignations, 98 were retirements, 95 were terminations, and 11 were external transfers.
The District of Columbia was next, seeing a total of 1,076 employees leaving for various reasons. More than 800 of USDA employees in the city took DRPs, while 148 resigned, 89 retired, and 16 transferred externally.
In terms of overall attrition, Texas ranks third, losing 1,025 total employees. Maryland follows with 984 employees lost, while Colorado lost 880, and Missouri and Oregon each lost 705.
Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden told Agri-Pulse recently that the department expects to complete a reorganization of the department by the end of 2026. More than half the remaining D.C.-based positions are expected to be moved to five regional hubs across the U.S.
The top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, said in a statement Monday that the attrition this year has harmed the department.
“Losing nearly twenty percent of all USDA staff weakens the Department’s ability to respond to challenges facing our farmers, leaves our food supply chains more vulnerable to threats like New World Screwworm and avian flu, and undermines efforts to drive the rural economy forward,” she said.
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