“We are dismantling our own United States Department of Agriculture.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for USDA again calls for making another nearly 20% cut to USDA programs the administration doesn’t support.
For USDA, the budget requests $20.8 billion in discretionary budget authority for FY 2027, a $4.9 billion or 19% decline from 2026. That compares to a $3.1 billion cut in 2025 for both discretionary and mandatory funding.
“We are dismantling our own United States Department of Agriculture,” said John Hansen, President of the Farmer’s Union of Nebraska. “A year ago, we lost 15,000 members of our USDA workforce. That was an enormous hit. That 15,000 workers was 14% of the total workforce or more, and now we’re seeing additional cuts in this budget.”
The budget proposal shows USDA cuts in staffing for agencies such as the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) among others. FSA and NRCS is projected to lose well over a quarter of its workforce by 2027.
Another agency targeted in USDA is the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, whose approximately $1.07 billion budget would be cut by $510 million. The budget significantly reduces formula grants that act as “pre-determined earmarks for university pet projects” according to language in Trump’s proposed budget.
The elimination of $659 million in Rural Development community facilities grants is a part of the budget as is an $82 million cut from the Rural Business Service and $61 million from the Agricultural Marketing Service. The Trump administration is advocating for more of such services to be funded through industry-led checkoff programs.
The budget proposal would eliminate the USDA Food for Peace program, for “wasting taxpayer dollars.” The Food for Peace program is a major donor to the United Nations World Food Programme.
The budget proposes to eliminate the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program, which purchases U.S. commodities from U.S. producers for foreign school feeding, labeling it “wasteful.” This program is been a major funds provider to the United Nations World Food Programme that uses funding to implement school meals.
In addition, USDA has cancelled $1 billion dollars in funding for the Local Food for Schools (LFS) and Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) programs. The new proposed budget does not include any funding for direct farm to school food purchases. This cut eliminates roughly $660 million for schools to buy local food and $420 million for food banks to acquire local produce and dairy.
According to sources, some of the smaller conservation programs are being cut by about 50 percent or more. There are also cuts being made to the forest service.
In the 92-page budget document, Trump said, “The USDA in its current form is a bloated Washington, D.C. bureaucracy with multiple management layers and many extraneous programs that are irrelevant to supporting an America First agricultural policy.”
The president of Nebraska Farmer’s Union isn’t optimistic. “Right now, agriculture is in the worst economic downturn that it has experienced since the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and this crunch has been getting more severe year after year for the last four years or more,” John Hansen told KLKN TV, an ABC affiliate.
“Farmers today are in crisis and these proposed budget cuts are only going to make things worse.”
