CHAMPAIGN – Nearly half of all Illinois counties have fewer local staff to help farmers with soil and water conservation efforts after cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Born out of the Dust Bowl, the Natural Resources Conservation Service works with farmers on programs that allow them to take a risk on conservation methods that may not pay off immediately, which help conserve and improve soil, preventing another ecological disaster.
Nationally, the agency lost 22% of its staff after President Donald Trump took office and made sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, according to federal workforce data.
In Illinois, Champaign County lost the most NRCS staff last year, partly because the county also houses the agency’s state office.
Seventeen counties lost at least half of their conservation staff, and seven lost all of those employees. And that expertise is not easily – or cheaply – replaceable.
Bernie Kluger worked on NRCS staffing issues under the Biden administration and now serves as Senior Consultant and Founding Partner at Prospect Partners LLC, a D.C. based consulting firm.
“For farmers in that county, they can’t afford to hire the services of that kind of expert,” he said.
Even if a farmer could hire a private company to help with conservation efforts, they wouldn’t have the local expertise NRCS staff do, according to Kluger.
“That individual expert was an expert on the soils in that county, and they knew the history of that soil in that county,” he said. “They knew how the local river would flood differently in this county than it does maybe 10, 15 miles down the way.”
Without NRCS programs, farmers also lose the incentive to try new practices, Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District Chair Steve Stierwalt said.
“So often when the cost share goes away, the practice goes away,” he said.
Without that financial incentive, Stierwalt said he isn’t sure farmers would seek out conservation assistance they’d have to pay for out of pocket.
Nathan Ryder agrees. He’s the communications director for the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, a nonprofit working to build a regenerative food and farm system. He also runs his own farm, The Ryder Family Farm, a 10-acre property with vegetables, dairy goats and sheep in southern Illinois.
“For me, looking for an outside source that I can pay for – probably not financially feasible for my farm,” he said, “and then there’s always the question of is the return on investment going to be quick to recoup that cost.”
Ryder likes that NRCS staff aren’t trying to sell him anything.
“I personally don’t think there’s really anywhere else to turn to get the good science-based information that’s not attached to a sales pitch basically,” he added.
In June, the USDA announced the NRCS will undergo organizational improvements, along with other agencies under the USDA.
“By aligning leadership and resources closer to the communities they serve, USDA is strengthening service delivery, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, and ensuring responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars – all while maintaining its unwavering focus on America’s farmers, ranchers and producers,” the press release states.
Kluger said that’s contrary to what the Trump administration has been doing to the NRCS so far.
“What we’re seeing is actually a contraction of staff away from local communities,” he said.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment.
The impact on farmers
Ryder Family Farm is in rural Pope County, one of about a dozen counties in Illinois that didn’t have its own NRCS office to begin with. Ryder drives about half an hour to neighboring Johnson County to speak with NRCS staff, he said. That office covers four counties in total.
Still, Ryder said he’s had great success working with the NRCS in the past like installing a hoop house on his farm to extend the growing period.
He’s currently working with the NRCS to rejuvenate eight acres of pasture his animals graze on, he said, but he’s noticed some differences since the last time he worked with the agency.
“Now you’re stuck getting a voicemail with somebody who might be able to check it once a week and try to return phone calls, not just from you but from everybody else who’s calling with the same questions,” he said.
Many NRCS offices bordering counties without their own office lost staff last year, including Johnson County, leaving fewer people to carry on the work in sprawling regions of rural Illinois.
The NRCS already struggled with high staff turnover due to the high demand for soil scientists nationally, according to Kluger.
“I think we’re gonna see a lot more burnout with our NRCS technicians cause obviously they’re doing everything they can to keep projects moving along and to keep the ball rolling,” Ryder said, “but really, how long is that workload sustainable for all these individuals to have?”
Stierwalt said the cut to personnel coincides with federal funding cuts to NRCS programs.
“We’re getting by with less staff, because there’s less money to administer,” he said.
Popular initiatives like the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, which helps farmers integrate conservation practices, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, which helps farmers build on conservation efforts, are seeing less funding.
“In the past, we’d get maybe 20 contracts for EQUIP, CSP in Champaign County,” he said. “I think this last year we got two.”
Stacy Zuber previously worked as the Illinois State Soil Health Specialist for the NRCS. She said the root of the funding problem in Illinois precedes the recent cuts by the Trump administration.
At some point, Illinois leadership turned down federal funding that the office wasn’t going to be able to use, which ended up impacting how much money the state would get in future years.
“It just so happened immediately after that is when they started going to the three-year average and so that really lowered the average, and so, since then basically that put us in a hole, and it’s been slowly trying to pull that up,” Zuber said.
Even with the funding troubles, she said the NRCS grants have been put to good use in Illinois, contrary to the Trump administration’s argument that the agency needs to be reorganized to “responsibly steward taxpayer dollars.”
“It’s not just giving out the money for the sake of giving out money,” Zuber said. “It’s very much helping those farmers address the real issue and a real environmental concern and making sure that it’s fixing a problem.”
State cuts conservation budget
The NRCS cuts come at a time when soil and water conservation efforts are already struggling in Illinois.
The state cut the budget for county soil and water conservation district nearly in half – from $8.5 million in fiscal year 2024 to $4.5 million in fiscal year 2025, according to the Association of Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts. The funding has remained at $4.5 million since then.
“We’re supposed to be working to reduce fertilizer runoff off of our farm fields,” Ryder said, “but the very people that are supposed to help farmers come up with solutions to help with that and to work on cover cropping are being cut in the state budget as well.”
With the cuts to NRCS staff, soil and water conservation districts are left trying to do more with less funding themselves, Stierwalt said.
“Soil and water conservation districts have been taking up some of the slack if you will that NRCS people used to do, because they’re just not there now,” he said.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The future of conservation
Stierwalt worries about the long-term impacts of losing this staff and funding.
“Civilizations fail when they lose their agriculture,” he said.
The cost share programs the NRCS runs are the best tool for encouraging farmers to adapt more sustainable practice, he said. Still, he worries even then that not enough farmers are getting onboard.
“Until we find long-term markets or long-term reasons for we farmers to make these changes, we’re always gonna be fighting this,” Stierwalt said.
Farmers need to be better incentivized to put process over how much they’re producing, he said.
“How we produce things needs to become as important financially as how much we raise,” he said.
Ryder said the NRCS and county soil and water conservation districts are just two tools to encourage farmers to do this, and without them, the consequences could be long-lasting.
“That’s leaving farmers with less resources to really help them make the best decisions and steward the land for future generations,” he said.