USDA RIF Plans: Numbers, Status, and What Comes Next

Reviewed August 2026 against the Congressional Research Service, USDA’s Farm Service Agency, and Government Executive’s federal-workforce reporting.

Try it: Run your own numbers →

“USDA RIF” is the Reduction in Force process the U.S. Department of Agriculture has used since 2025 to cut and relocate its workforce. USDA’s own July 24, 2025 reorganization memo reported a staff reduction of 15,364 people since January 2025, and the Congressional Research Service’s most recent staffing estimate, dated February 2026, puts total USDA employment at about 71,000 — down from about 91,000 in fiscal year 2025, a drop of about 22% in roughly thirteen months. The plan is still being implemented and still being fought in federal court, so this page separates what’s confirmed, what’s a target, and what’s still in dispute, with a checklist at the end for getting a fresher number than the ones printed here.

What “USDA RIF” Actually Means

A Reduction in Force is a specific, regulated federal personnel action — distinct from an ordinary layoff — governed by 5 CFR Part 351. Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute lists the operative subparts: General Provisions, Scope of Competition, Retention Standing, Release From Competitive Level, and Assignment Rights, sometimes called “bump and retreat” rights (Cornell Law LII). In practice, an agency defines a “competitive area” (a location or organizational unit), groups employees into “competitive levels” (similar jobs), and then releases people from those levels based on tenure, veterans’ preference, length of service, and performance — not simply which position is being eliminated. An employee “bumped” from their job may have the right to displace a more junior employee in a different position they’re qualified to fill.

Most of the headcount drop described below did not happen through that formal process. USDA relied first on a Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) — a voluntary buyout where employees agreed to leave in exchange for continued pay through a set date — and only moved to involuntary RIF notices for the remainder. That distinction matters for search intent: “USDA RIF” in the news since 2025 covers both the voluntary DRP wave and the formal RIF notices that followed it, plus the reorganization plan that reshuffled where the surviving positions sit.

USDA’s Reorganization Plan: Hubs and Headcounts

Secretary Brooke Rollins announced USDA’s reorganization plan on July 24, 2025. Its central move is geographic: consolidating Washington, DC-area staff into five regional hubs — Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah — chosen for existing USDA staff concentrations and lower cost of living. The department’s stated goal is to cut National Capital Region (NCR) staffing from about 4,600 employees to no more than 2,000, a reduction of about 57% in the DC area specifically (Congressional Research Service Report R48905).

On the facilities side, CRS reports that USDA plans to vacate the South Building in Washington and Braddock Place in Alexandria, Virginia, while retaining the Whitten Building, the Yates Building, and the National Agricultural Library. Congress pushed back procedurally: the FY2026 appropriations act, P.L. 119-37, added requirements for committee approval before USDA can relocate offices or close field offices for agencies including NRCS and Rural Development. Beyond the DC move, the plan also calls for consolidating regional and area offices for ARS, NASS, the Food and Nutrition Service, the Forest Service, and NRCS to align with the five hub cities.

USDA ARS and the Research Agencies

“USDA ARS RIF” searches are asking specifically about the Agricultural Research Service, one of four agencies in USDA’s Research, Education and Economics (REE) mission area alongside the Economic Research Service (ERS), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). ARS runs its intramural science program through area offices based in Beltsville, Maryland; Peoria, Illinois; Stoneville, Mississippi; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Albany, California, and those area offices are among the regional structures being folded into the five-hub model described above (CRS Report R48905).

No public, agency-by-agency breakdown of ARS-specific separations has been verified against a fetchable primary source as of this review. What is confirmed is the department-wide total: about 71,000 USDA employees as of the CRS’s February 2026 estimate, across all eight mission areas including REE. If you need the current ARS-only headcount, USDA’s Research, Education and Economics mission area publishes staffing information through its component agencies’ own sites, and OPM’s FedScope employment database breaks federal staffing out by sub-agency each quarter — that is the more precise route than any single news estimate.

The U.S. Forest Service, also part of USDA, illustrates the scale of research-side cuts elsewhere in the department: Government Executive reported in April 2025 that the Forest Service planned to consolidate nine regional offices into as few as three, and that its research arm — covering fire-risk modeling and forest restoration — employed around 1,500 people facing reductions (Government Executive).

How USDA’s Workforce Numbers Add Up

Two figures anchor the department-wide count: USDA’s own July 24, 2025 memo said the workforce had already fallen by 15,364 people since January 2025, and CRS’s February 2026 estimate puts the total at about 71,000, against a roughly 91,000 baseline for fiscal year 2025. Subtracting the confirmed 15,364 from the ~91,000 baseline leaves about 75,636 as of mid-2025 — meaning a further ~4,636 departures are implied between July 2025 and February 2026, whether through additional DRP acceptances, formal RIF actions, retirements, or ordinary attrition. That last figure isn’t separately published; it’s the arithmetic gap between the two confirmed totals, shown here as a calculated step rather than a reported one.

USDA RIF at a Glance: Before vs. Now

Legal Status and Timeline

The reorganization is being challenged in AFGE v. Trump, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s San Francisco Division. Plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and several trade and environmental organizations. The suit was filed in April 2025 against the executive order underlying the reorganization; in July 2025 the Supreme Court paused a lower-court injunction, letting USDA proceed with implementation while the underlying case continued. A congressional prohibition on further workforce reductions, tied to FY2026 appropriations, expired on April 30, 2026. In response, the unions and allied nonprofits filed a new preliminary-injunction motion on July 1, 2026, seeking to stop the relocation of 2,600 Washington-based employees, arguing USDA cannot pursue restructuring of this scale without congressional authorization — a point strengthened by Congress’s refusal to fund it in the FY2026 appropriations process. A preliminary-injunction hearing is scheduled for August 21, 2026 (DTN Progressive Farmer).

Because that hearing sits close to this review date, treat every figure above as a snapshot, not an endpoint. To get a number more current than this page:

• Check the docket in AFGE v. Trump (N.D. Cal., San Francisco Division) for any ruling issued after August 21, 2026.
• Search CRS’s report library for a revised edition of Report R48905 — CRS updates its USDA structure reports as the reorganization proceeds.
• Check USDA’s newsroom for updated press releases on hub staffing and facility timelines.
• Query OPM’s FedScope employment database for the next quarterly USDA headcount by sub-agency, which is the only source that breaks staffing out below the department-wide total used here.

Farmers, Landowners, and FSA Loans

A “USDA loan to buy land” is a separate program from everything above: it’s a Farm Service Agency (FSA) Farm Loan Program product, most commonly a Farm Ownership Loan, not connected to the workforce reductions. FSA’s Direct Farm Ownership Loans, funded and serviced directly by the agency, max out at $600,000 and can be used to purchase farmland, construct or repair farm buildings, or make water- and soil-conservation improvements. FSA’s Guaranteed Farm Ownership Loans, issued by a commercial lender and backed by an FSA guarantee, go up to $2,343,000. Both offer financing terms up to 40 years for real estate, with FSA describing rates as competitive against conventional agricultural lending and directing borrowers to its current-rate page rather than publishing a fixed number that would go stale. A down-payment assistance option lets FSA finance up to 45% of the purchase or appraised value for eligible borrowers, on top of what a beginning farmer contributes directly (USDA Farm Service Agency).

FSA is part of USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation mission area, which is going through the same department-wide restructuring that’s consolidating regional and area offices for ARS, NASS, the Food and Nutrition Service, the Forest Service, and NRCS into the five hub cities. If you’re mid-application for a Farm Ownership Loan, confirm with your local FSA office that its location and staffing haven’t changed before a scheduled appointment or document deadline — office consolidations under this plan are proceeding county by county, not all at once.

FSA Farm Ownership Loan Calculator

Plug in a purchase price against FSA’s published loan caps to see your down payment, loan amount, and an estimated monthly payment.

Assumes a standard fixed-rate amortizing loan and excludes closing costs, guarantee fees, property taxes, and insurance. Caps shown are FSA’s published Direct and Guaranteed Farm Ownership Loan maximums as of August 2026 — confirm current limits and your actual quoted rate with your local FSA office before relying on this estimate.

Satellite Monitoring as Federal Field Capacity Shrinks

The reorganization’s field impact goes beyond headquarters. As the Forest Service consolidates from nine regional offices to as few as three and shrinks a roughly 1,500-person research team, and as ARS folds area offices into the five-hub structure, some of the reclamation checks, habitat surveys, and land assessments that federal field staff used to handle become harder to get on a predictable timeline (Government Executive).

Where public monitoring capacity is stretched, some landowners, exploration companies, and county planners commission that work commercially instead. Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection service and its mining.farmonaut.com portal let a landowner or exploration team submit an area of interest and get a remote assessment without waiting on a federal survey queue; a worked example of the resulting 3D mineral-prospectivity output is available here.

The clips below walk through how satellite and AI-driven geochemistry have been applied on recent exploration projects in North America:

Additional project walkthroughs, including sites outside North America:

FAQ

Conclusion

USDA RIF plans, at this review, mean a department that has gone from about 91,000 to about 71,000 employees in roughly thirteen months, is consolidating Washington-area staff from 4,600 toward a target of 2,000 across five regional hubs, and is defending that restructuring in federal court with a hearing set for August 21, 2026. None of those numbers are final. The method that stays useful after they change is the one described above: check the AFGE v. Trump docket, pull the latest CRS report, and query FedScope for a sub-agency count rather than relying on any single article’s snapshot — including this one.

• Explore Satellite-Based Mineral Detection: farmonaut.com/satellite-based-mineral-detection
• Map a Site: mining.farmonaut.com
• Contact Us: farmonaut.com/contact-us