“While the lapse in federal funding has ended, NASS has not been able to engage in the necessary data collection and analysis over the past few weeks,” the USDA explained at the time.
Reuters’ Leah Douglas, P.J. Huffstutter, and Julie Ingwersen reported that “during a shutdown, about 42,000 USDA staff would be furloughed, according to the agency’s 2025 shutdown contingency plan, roughly half the agency’s employees.
