United States Department of Agriculture

• 1. Introduction

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  Abraham Lincoln called it "the people's department" when he signed the United States Department of Agriculture into existence on the 15th of May, 1862. More than half of all Americans at the time were directly or indirectly involved in farming or agribusiness. The eight employees he put in charge were given a mandate: conduct research on agriculture, rural development, aquaculture, and human nutrition. What grew from that mandate became one of the largest agencies in the federal government. It both fed and failed the farmers it was built to serve. Questions about who the department truly served would surface in courtrooms, congressional hearings, and protests outside its Washington headquarters for decades to come.

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• 2. From Seeds to Cabinet Rank

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  Henry Leavitt Ellsworth became Commissioner of Patents in the Department of State in 1837. His office had nothing formally to do with agriculture. Even so, Ellsworth began routing new seed and plant varieties to members of Congress and local farming societies on his own initiative. The effort gained official standing in 1839, when Congress established an Agricultural Division within the Patent Office. The legislature allocated $1,000 for "the collection of agricultural statistics and other agricultural purposes." Ellsworth's annual reports pressed for a dedicated public depository, a clerk for agricultural statistics, and the application of chemistry to farming. His peers would name him the "Father of the Department of Agriculture."

  The Patent Office moved to the newly created Department of the Interior in 1849. Pressure for a fully independent agricultural agency kept building. Agriculturalist Isaac Newton became the department's first commissioner when the independent Department of Agriculture was formally established. In 1868, the young department relocated to a building on the National Mall designed by Washington architect Adolf Cluss. The building stood between 12th Street and 14th Street SW. The department had use of the Mall's full width up to B Street NW for planting and experimentation.

  In 1887, the House and Senate each passed separate bills to elevate both agriculture and labor to Cabinet status. Farm interests rejected the pairing with labor, and the combined bill died in conference committee. Cabinet status for agriculture alone came in 1889. The Hatch Act of 1887 had already begun extending the department's reach by directing federal money to agricultural experiment stations in each state. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 went further. It funded cooperative extension services that brought agricultural instruction and home economics to the public in every county.

  The department had built partnerships with organizations like the American Farm Bureau Federation, which represented the largest commercial growers before Congress. That relationship would matter when agricultural crisis arrived in the 1930s.

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• 3. Feeding the Hungry

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  As late as the early 1930s, farm work occupied a fourth of all Americans. When the Depression caused mass unemployment in cities after 1929, many young people who had left for urban work returned to the family farm. The department stepped in with loans for small landowners, technical advice, and help ensuring food continued to be distributed. Its Bureau of Home Economics, established in 1923, published shopping guidance and recipes to help households stretch their food budgets.

  By 1933, statisticians within the department had built a comprehensive data-gathering arm called the Division of Crop and Livestock Estimates. Secretary Henry Wallace, himself a statistician, strengthened that operation by introducing sampling techniques. Professional economists ran a separate Bureau of Agricultural Economics, giving the department a dual capacity for both statistical and economic analysis.

  Today, approximately 71 percent of the USDA's $213 billion annual budget goes to nutrition assistance programs. The largest single component is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the Food Stamp program. Every month, SNAP provides food to more than 40 million low-income and homeless Americans. The Food and Nutrition Service administers SNAP and related programs. The department is a member of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, working to ensure that nutrition benefits reach people without stable housing.

  The Food for Peace Act of 1954, building on the Agricultural Act of 1949, gave the department authority to send surplus American crops abroad. Aid can reach recipients through USAID, foreign governments, the World Food Programme, or approved nonprofits.

  When COVID-19 disrupted agricultural supply chains in 2020, the department responded with immediate funding. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program on the 17th of April, 2020. It directed $16 billion to farmers and ranchers and $3 billion toward purchasing surplus produce, dairy, and meat for charitable distribution. The department had access to an additional $873.3 million in Section 32 funding for food bank purchases, plus $850 million for food bank administrative costs.

  The department formally ended racial segregation among its own staff in 1964, as part of the Civil Rights Act. But allegations of discrimination in its lending programs would take decades more to resolve.

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• 4. The Long Road to Justice

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  In 1983, the USDA disbanded its Office of Civil Rights and stopped responding to discrimination claims. That decision would later be cited in a critical assessment from the Government Accountability Office. When black farmers filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in 1997, they were documenting systematic discrimination. Their claims described decades of loan denials and exclusion from department programs.

  Black farmers from at least five states held protests in front of the USDA's Washington headquarters that same year. Representatives of the National Black Farmers Association met with President Bill Clinton and administration officials at the White House. The NBFA's president also testified before the United States House Committee on Agriculture.

  One attorney described the case as "the most organized, largest civil rights case in the history of the country." In Pigford v. Glickman, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman approved a settlement and consent decree on the 14th of April, 1999. The settlement formally recognized discrimination against 22,363 black farmers. The NBFA called the agreement incomplete because more than 70,000 farmers were excluded. Lawyers estimated the settlement's total value at more than $2 billion. Some farmers had their debts forgiven as part of the terms.

  In 1920, one in seven U.S. farmers was African-American. By 2004, that figure had dropped to one in one hundred. The Chicago Tribune reported in 2004 that black farmers had been driven out of business at a rate three times faster than white farmers.

  John W. Boyd Jr. of the NBFA secured congressional support for legislation to settle late-filer cases, seeking $100 million in relief funds. Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator, co-sponsored a bill that passed the Senate in 2007. In December 2010, Obama signed legislation setting aside $1.15 billion for outstanding claims. Boyd attended the signing ceremony at the White House.

  Congress appropriated a second round of payouts in 2011, known as Pigford II, for $1.25 billion. That came to roughly $250,000 per farmer. Advocates noted the timing was inadequate: the payout arrived far too late to help many who had needed relief during the original 1999 litigation. As of 2013, a total of 90,000 African-American, Hispanic, female, and Native American farmers had filed claims across the various discrimination settlements.

  Native American farmers filed their own class-action suit in 1999, Keepseagle v. Vilsack, alleging loan discrimination similar to what black farmers had experienced. A settlement of up to $760 million was eventually reached. Track A claimants were eligible for up to $50,000, and Track B claimants for up to $250,000 with a higher standard of proof. Hispanic farmers followed with Garcia v. Vilsack in 2000, in which $1.33 billion was made available for compensation awards plus $160 million in debt relief. In 2001, Love v. Vilsack brought claims on behalf of women farmers alleging gender discrimination. Congress responded with the Equality for Women Farmers Act, establishing a formal process for such allegations to be heard.

  In October 2008, the Government Accountability Office issued a report criticizing how the USDA had handled discrimination complaints. It recommended the creation of an oversight review board to examine civil rights cases.

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• 5. Guardians of the Land

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  33,270 employees work for the United States Forest Service, making it the largest single agency within the USDA by staff count. It administers the national forests and national grasslands that together cover roughly a quarter of all federal lands.

  In 1997, the Forest Service published a resource guide to help its officials develop and maintain relationships with tribal governments. That guide is organized around a four-point American Indian and Alaska Native policy. The policy covers governmental relations, treaty rights, sensitivity to Native religious practices, and technical assistance to Indian governments. Forest Service officials attend regular intergovernmental meetings with tribal neighbors. They walk through Native lands to acknowledge cultural needs and discuss planned activities with cultural implications. Ecological studies on Forest Service lands now incorporate traditional Native practices alongside conventional science.

  The Intertribal Technical Assistance Network works to connect tribal governments and communities with USDA's technical assistance programs. More than $6.2 billion in Rural Development funding has been directed to community infrastructure in Indian country. That money flows through 47 state offices covering the continental United States, Hawaii, and Alaska.

  The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service provides veterinary care in tribal areas. It covers disease prevention in herds and fisheries and conducts surveys for disease near Native American lands. The Agricultural Marketing Service has explored channeling bison meat raised on tribal land into federal food distribution programs for those communities.

  The NRCS Strike Force Initiative identified impoverished counties in Mississippi, Georgia, and Arkansas to receive increased outreach about USDA assistance programs. That effort generated a 196 percent increase in contracts representing more than 250,000 acres of farmland in the department's Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

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• 6. A Department Under Pressure

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  On the 27th of August, 2018, the USDA announced a farm aid package totaling $4.7 billion in direct payments to American farmers. On the 7th of February, 2022, the department launched the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. This $1 billion initiative was designed to test and verify the benefits of climate-friendly agricultural practices. That October, it announced a $1.3 billion debt relief program for roughly 36,000 farmers who had fallen behind on loan payments or faced foreclosure. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 set aside $3.1 billion more to assist farmers in high-risk operations backed by USDA loans.

  In February 2025, the Trump administration terminated multiple probationary employees across the department. Among those let go were researchers at the Agricultural Research Service, a division dedicated to protecting the national food supply through science. On the 14th of February, 2025, the USDA described the action in a public statement. The department called it "an aggressive plan to optimize its workforce by eliminating positions that are no longer necessary." The department then acknowledged it had also terminated people in roles supporting the response to highly pathogenic avian influenza. It said it was working to reverse those specific terminations.

  In March 2025, the department eliminated two federal programs that had provided roughly $1 billion to schools and food banks. Those funds had allowed schools and food banks to purchase food directly from local farms, ranchers, and producers. On the 9th of January, 2026, Secretary Brooke Rollins suspended financial awards to the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis. The department cited "widespread and systemic fraud associated with federal benefit programs."

  The USDA's 2022 strategic plan pledged to support farmers through natural disasters and to develop new plant varieties and management options that increase farming efficiency. That research mission rests with the Agricultural Research Service, whose workforce was reduced in the February 2025 terminations.

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