A White House proposal released Friday seeks to cut the Agriculture Department’s annual budget by $4.9 billion from 2026 enacted levels as officials work to relocate thousands of DC-area USDA staff to offices around the country by the end of the year.
President Donald Trump asked Congress to appropriate $20.8 billion in discretionary fiscal 2027 funding to the department responsible for distributing farm loans and low-income grocery assistance. That’s 19% less than the budget lawmakers gave USDA in fiscal 2026, or a 6.7% decrease from the White House’s $22.3 billion budget ask last year.
Despite broad cuts, Trump is requesting $50 million to implement the department’s reorganization, slated for completion by the end of 2026. The changes are pitched as a way to increase efficiency and “eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”
Critics have warned the relocation effort could hobble the department’s ability to oversee food safety or issue farm loans and crop insurance.
Trump is separately pressuring lawmakers to pass a long-delayed farm bill that could increase how much farmers can borrow, while lawmakers weigh allocating billions in economic assistance to the agriculture sector that USDA would be responsible for distributing.
Congress provided $26.7 billion in its Agriculture-FDA discretionary spending measure for fiscal 2026, well above Trump’s ask.
Food Aid, Research Grants Targeted
The budget proposal would ax the Food for Peace program, which USDA operates on behalf of the now-shuttered US Agency for International Development, for “wasting taxpayer dollars.” Trump also wants to do away with the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program, a second federal initiative to ship food aid abroad. The request asks Congress to rescind $1.2 billion and $240 million allocated to the respective programs.
Lawmakers proposed making USDA the permanent operator of Food for Peace in a House-drafted farm bill that advanced to the floor March 4. Congress has ignored Trump’s repeated requests to kill both programs, supported by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle because they allot billions of dollars to purchase crops from US farmers.
Congress is tasked with considering whether to slash $510 million from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s grant budget, shrinking what the White House characterizes as the agency’s ability to distribute “pre-determined earmarks for university pet projects.”
The funding reduction targets capacity grants provided to land-grant universities for long-term agricultural research and education. Those funds are typically allocated through formulas accounting for an area’s farm population and poverty rate, but the fiscal 2027 budget proposal seeks to shift toward grants “competitively awarded to projects in the national interest.”
Trump also wants to cut $61 million from the Agricultural Marketing Service’s budget designed to help US farmers sell crops at home and abroad. The reduction request comes as the agriculture sector navigates export markets upended by the administration’s shifting tariffs, low crop prices, and high production costs.
“Industry can fund their own marketing efforts without deepening the Federal deficit,” the budget proposal said.
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