New Florida Farm Service Agency Director Focused on Grower Engagement

Earlier this summer, the Trump administration appointed Marcinda Kester to serve as the state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) in Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Kester has worked for FSA for 33 years and most recently served as the FSA county executive director for Florida’s Polk, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Prior to her role in Florida, she served as the farm programs disaster specialist and farm programs chief for FSA in Kentucky.

The announcement was well received by Florida agricultural stakeholders given her experience as a county executive director. At a recent informational meeting for citrus growers, Matt Joyner, executive vice president/chief executive officer of Florida Citrus Mutual, said her appointment is welcome news.

“I have known Marcinda for a lot of years. She has done a phenomenal job as a county director and is a standout in the FSA system,” Joyner said. “Our association and many others in the state supported her appointment.”

Kester spoke during the informational meeting and outlined some of her priorities for the state leadership position. One is more engagement with FSA stakeholders and growers. 

“I want to build better relationships with our stakeholder groups,” she said. “I love doing events like this one to tell the story about what we are doing at FSA.”

She said she’s working to create more regular stakeholder meetings so growers can get up to speed on what’s new from FSA and the status of current programs.

Another priority is working to address some of the inefficiencies within FSA. That challenge has been heightened by recent retirements of USDA staff under the new administration’s actions to reduce federal spending.

“We are looking at our staffing models to determine how we are going to get things done,” she said. There are some great things (for agriculture) that were part of the Big Beautiful Bill. But that put a lot of things on our plate at USDA. We are excited about it, and we are going to get it done because we are a can-do service agency.”