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Fact check: How many USDA county offices are in the US

Checked on October 23, 2025

Executive summary — Direct answer: the provided sources do not state a definitive count of USDA county offices, so a precise number cannot be confirmed from the material you supplied. The documents offered describe USDA service center roles, research resources, and agency publications but omit any explicit total of county or county-equivalent USDA offices. To establish an authoritative count requires consulting USDA program-specific directories (for example, Farm Service Agency or Natural Resources Conservation Service contact lists) or a consolidated USDA staffing/office inventory, none of which appear in the supplied source set [1] [2] [3].

1. Why the supplied materials fail to answer the question — a surprising omission. The analyses attached to the user’s sources consistently indicate topical content—climate-smart agriculture resources, dietary guidelines, and library holdings—without delivering a numerical tally of USDA county offices. The recurring theme is information about programs and data tools rather than organizational counts, which explains the absence of the requested figure [1] [4] [2]. Because the materials focus on subject-matter resources and research outputs, they are useful for context but not for the specific administrative metric you asked for.

2. What the supplied sources do offer that’s relevant to understanding USDA presence. Several entries describe USDA Service Centers and program delivery mechanisms, highlighting that USDA operates through multiple field offices serving agricultural producers and rural communities [1] [5]. These descriptions imply a distributed footprint of county-level engagement, but they stop short of enumerating offices. The provided economic research and statistics resources underline the USDA’s county-level data collection activities without equating those activities to a one-to-one relationship with county offices [2] [3].

3. How differing document types create confusion when counting offices. The set includes program guidance, research reports, and library descriptions, which reflect different definitions of “presence”—program delivery points, data collection sites, and archival holdings—each could be misread as an “office.” The supplied analyses note that sources like the Economic Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service publish county-level data, but publishing data at the county level does not necessarily correspond to physically staffed USDA county offices [2] [3]. This distinction explains why counting offices from these documents would be unreliable.

4. Practical steps to obtain a reliable count, given the gaps in the supplied material. To determine a precise number, one should consult program-specific directories—such as Farm Service Agency county office lists, Natural Resources Conservation Service field offices, and Rural Development state/county contacts—or a USDA-wide facilities inventory. None of these targeted lists are present among your provided sources; the materials instead offer thematic resources and agency publications that support program work but do not compile office counts [1] [5] [2].

5. How to interpret possible divergent counts if you find them elsewhere. When seeking a number outside these supplied sources, expect variation depending on definition—counting county service centers, counting staffed versus unstaffed locations, or counting county-equivalent jurisdictions (parishes, boroughs). The supplied documents suggest multiple organizational layers and program-specific structures that would produce different tallies if aggregated without consistent criteria [1] [2] [3]. Clarify whether you mean every county-equivalent, every service center, or every location with USDA staff.

6. Recommended next-source checklist to resolve the question definitively. Based on the content gaps identified in the supplied analyses, the decisive documents would be: (a) the Farm Service Agency’s county office directory, (b) NRCS field office listings, (c) an official USDA Facilities/Real Property inventory, and (d) a USDA organizational chart or contact page that consolidates county-level presences. The current source set lacks these specific inventories, which is why the question remains unanswered by the material provided [1] [5] [3].

7. Bottom line and accountability: what we can and cannot state from your sources. From the materials you provided, the only verifiable conclusions are that USDA operates through service centers and produces county-level data, but no authoritative count of county offices is present within those documents. Any numerical claim would require external confirmation from USDA program directories or an official USDA publication not included here [1] [4] [2]. If you want, I can next locate and compare the specific USDA directories or inventories that list county offices to deliver a definitive, sourced count.

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