Staffing the Natural Resources Conservation Service
Finding and retaining employees has been a long-standing challenge for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
However, staffing up became especially important after USDA received 19 and a half billion dollars in conservation program funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. The extra people are needed to help farmers plan and implement conservation practices.
As you can see on this chart, NRCS staffing reached a ten-year low in 2019, and but it’s now on the rise.
The agency hit its 623-person hiring goal during fiscal 2023 and provided 2 billion dollars in overall conservation program funding, including over 390 million dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Agency officials say they need approximately 14 thousand employees to handle the additional demands for assistance with conservation practices.
NRCS says the goal is to hire 16 hundred people this year, 12 hundred next year and 11 hundred in 2026.
Read more about NRCS staffing in Noah Wicks’ series here and here
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