The Trump administration has implemented a sweeping purge of the federal government’s state-level agriculture officials after a clash between political leadership and top career staff.
The Agriculture Department has reassigned or detailed out six of the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s state conservationists in recent weeks, according to seven people familiar with the changes and internal communications viewed by The Washington Sun, creating a shakeup that current and former employees said the agency never previously experienced.
The bulk of the changes were precipitated by an unusually testy meeting in which Trump administration political appointees castigated USDA’s state leaders — already grappling with severe staffing shortages — for failing to meet farmers’ needs, heightened because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war.
NRCS Chief Colton Buckley told the top career leaders that they had to get funding out the door more quickly, according to two people familiar with the exchange, before yelling and cursing at the staff. He brought forms to initiate their reassignments or firings to the meeting and said he was prepared to sign them if the executives did not move the funds with added haste.
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One employee described Buckley as “verbally abusive” during the meeting.
The state conservationists, who typically oversee dozens of field offices that help connect farmers and ranchers to financial and technical assistance, pleaded with Buckley to recognize the Trump administration’s repeated efforts to trim the federal workforce had left them without the capacity necessary to meet his requests. They were working to get the money out to partners to help farmers as quickly as they could, they said, but they did not have enough personnel to move any faster.
NRCS has shed nearly 3,000 employees under Trump, or around 24% of its workforce.
Buckley was unmoved by the argument. As of early November, the chief has begun the process of reassigning state leaders in Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming and Illinois. He previously forced out the head of the NRCS office in Texas and has detailed out its leader in Florida. The state conservationist in Colorado has moved to Texas, creating more displacement.
“This is unprecedented in NRCS history,” one employee said of the shakeup. “Trump’s tariffs hurt the farmers. [His workforce-reduction efforts] hurt the farmers, and career employees are being punished after being placed in a compromised position.”
In a message to staff, Jackie Byam, until recently the NRCS state conservationist in Wyoming, made clear her departure was not expected and she did not know who would replace her. The moves have not been announced to the public, the agency at large or to NRCS partners who help implement key agricultural programs on the ground.
“It was very fast,” another employee said. “They didn’t even have time for succession planning, to hand things off, or even to know who would be acting in their place. Lots of confusion has been left in the states from the moves, with little to no communication from upper leadership.”
The Department of Agriculture did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided $33 billion to agricultural conservation programs, primarily by repurposing funds previously approved under President Joe Biden. The administration has faced significant pressure to support farmers who are still reeling from Trump’s tariffs and high costs associated with the war in Iran. Last year, the president set up a $12 billion aid package for farmers.
“With the big beautiful bill, we have received the most amount of money we have seen in history in our state,” one NRCS field employee said. “But we are at the lowest staffing levels in the field offices any of our staff has seen.”
Elsewhere in the department, the Trump administration has also slowed or canceled the release of millions in grant funding and attempted to claw back grants that were already awarded, causing a rift between the USDA and farmers, and further slowing the grant process.
Employees throughout NRCS told The Sun they are struggling to keep pace with new demands in light of staffing shortages.
“The field offices are doing the best they can with limited to even no staffing in some places,” one employee said. “It’s a disaster.”
NRCS employees are some of the most hands-on staff across the USDA’s many programs dedicated to farmers. NRCS field office employees visit farmers and their land before signing off on projects. For large projects, this can entail reviewing hundreds of acres of farmland.
Some offices are down to a single conservationist, with the office open only one day a week.
Multiple employees lamented that they are now facing shorter deadlines to complete their work, with timelines repeatedly reduced.
The directive from agency leadership has been “spending more money faster,” one employee said. “Much faster target dates than ever before.”
The goal is admirable, the worker added, but not currently feasible.
“We have little to no staff, and are being forced to take more money with no one to obligate contracts,” the person said.
The Sun previously reported that agricultural producers were struggling to receive NRCS funds due to staffing shortages, with farmers saying they waited for weeks to get someone on the phone and increasingly found physical offices closed without notice. The National Sustainable Agricultural Committee found that as of January 2026, 141 counties across the country had lost 100% of their NRCS staff.
Andrea Kreiner, executive director of the Oregon Association of Conservation Districts, which works with USDA to help direct financial and technical assistance to farmers, said she maintains good relationships with local NRCS staff but that has not stopped delays in payments.
“Disruptions come from the fact that they are understaffed,” Kreiner said. “That was caused by decisions made at the beginning of the administration.”
Deadlines in fiscal 2026, which ended Sept. 30 were “pushed down from national,” the NRCS field office employee said, and creating new agreements with farmers was prioritized over actually getting money into the hands of those who already had them.
Employees have been threatened and disciplined if they miss deadlines, the employee said, but that has not stopped backlogs from building up. Even an expedited delivery of funds will do little to speed up the actual assistance farmers receive, they explained.
“What people at the top forget is once the money is spent, the real work begins,” the employee said. “We have to walk producers through implementation, complete designs, be on site for construction inspections and complete contract management tasks, which takes a big portion of our time.”
NRCS staff said state conservationists were merely scapegoates, with one agency partner saying the official in their state was “just the most obvious person to throw under the bus.”
“Unless the next guy is going to pull about 20 foresters and engineers out of thin air, he’ll do about as well as she ever did,” they said.
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