The Natural Resources Conservation Service should see 1,600 new employees by early this fall after being granted direct hiring authority last week, NRCS Chief Terry Cosby told Agri-Pulse Thursday.
On the sidelines of Commodity Classic in Houston, Cosby said the new authority from the Office of Personnel Management will allow hiring managers — often state conservationists or local office employees — to offer positions to applicants who meet the minimum qualifications for each job.
Many people the agency is hoping to recruit are interested in jobs focused on the environment, Cosby said.
"More or less, 1,600 folks are going to be coming," Cosby told Agri-Pulse. "That's going to help us get to that number of 3,000 that we've been talking about over the next two years."
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The agency has been working to ramp up hiring as it spends $17 billion in Inflation Reduction Act conservation program funding in addition to the farm bill funding it normally distributes. These efforts have included bundle hiring for needed positions, a pathways internship program for high school and college students, and assistance from agency retirees.
“NRCS has an urgent need of literally thousands of science, technology, engineering and mathematics positions, across multiple years, in a very competitive marketplace,” Deputy Chief for Management and Strategy Angela Biggs wrote in a memorandum to state conservationists last May.
Numbers provided to Agri-Pulse through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate the agency had 10,568 total employees in fiscal Year 2023, which ended Sept. 30. Statistics from the Office of Personnel Management put the total number of employees that year slightly higher, at 10,669.
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