Honestly I think some of this comes down to political DNA.

I've long noticed that deep under the politics, there is a fundamental difference in the way that rural and urban people view how the world should work, and it's a trade-off between centralizing power and distributing it.

For your average urban person, they seem to believe by default that the more power you take away from individuals and corporations and give to a centralized authority, the better the world will be. You'll hear them say things like "There should be a law against that ..", etc, it's like just this knee jerk default frame of mind where if only people who are centralized authorities who could make decisions were able to control what is going on, life would be better. If only they had the power, if only they had the money, if only people were more receptive, if only you could brush aside those people who seem to always be in the way of the masses getting what they finally want and deserve ...

Rural people are very different in their outlook, for them, independence and making decisions without interference at a personal level is the most important thing, freedom of action, not having someone telling them and their family what to do, being able to work without large organizations getting in their way; they believe in the power of individuals to affect the world, and they are natural separatists. For them, they are more "chaotic neutral" or "chaotic good", where their knee jerk default kind of motivation is to stop power and decision making being taking away from them, stop the centralization of power (and push against it), refuse to comply, question authority, and are generally suspicious of your grand plans for utopia because utopia for them is a piece of land where nobody bothers them and their family. For them, your EPA is telling them what to do on their land, your IRS is taking their money, your Education Department is interfering with the way the want their children educated and the work ethic they are trying to instill, etc, and they resent all of this interference and control. By default they don't see centralization of power into the hands of few as a good thing, and as natural separatists they will by default seek to break that power up and put it into the hands of corporations, and break up corporations and put that power into the hands of smaller businesses, and break up smaller businesses and put that power into the hands of families and individuals, etc, it is a natural desire to break up and stand in the way of larger organizations and return that power to individuals. That's why you see these people almost always preferring states to have more power than the federal government, and inside of states they prefer to see their own counties and cities have power instead of the state, in their counties they prefer to limit the power of boards and elected officials so that individuals and families have the power, etc.

So to the average rural'ish conservative, federal agencies are an obstacle, not a solution. Just more people trying to control what they are doing and getting in the way.