What Is the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and What Does It Do?
September 12, 2026
The Farm Service Agency (FSA) is the USDA agency responsible for delivering most farm support programs at the local level. It operates a network of county offices across the country — roughly 2,100 offices serving every agricultural county — that are the direct point of contact between the federal government and individual farm operators.
FSA's core functions
FSA administers:
- Commodity programs — ARC and PLC enrollment, payment calculations, and disbursement
- Disaster programs — LFP, LIP, ELAP, NAP, and Emergency Relief Program administration
- Farm loans — operating, ownership, and emergency loan programs
- Conservation programs — CRP sign-up, contract administration, and compliance monitoring
- Price support programs — marketing loans and loan deficiency payments for commodities
County committee structure
Unique among federal agencies, FSA relies partly on locally elected county committees — farmers elected by their peers — to make certain program decisions and handle appeals. This structure is intended to ground program administration in local agricultural knowledge, but it also means that interpretation of program rules can vary somewhat from county to county.
FSA and the data
All FSA program payments are reported to the National Financial Management Service (NFMS) and ultimately flow to USASpending.gov, where they appear as financial assistance awards. This is the primary source for SubsidyLookup's data. The quality and timeliness of data reporting depends on FSA's internal systems and reporting cycles.
Contacting your FSA office
If you find a payment in SubsidyLookup and want to understand the underlying program or verify your own records, your local FSA county office is the right starting point. FSA maintains an office locator on its website. See our data sources page for more about how FSA data flows into SubsidyLookup.