The Agriculture Department plans to close major facilities in the national capital region, including the South Building, and reorganize regional operations into five hubs around the country – Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah.
The news was delivered by Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins to employees by video this morning, after which USDA posted a news release.
Also included on the list of facilities planned for closure are the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland, the George Washington Carver Center that houses offices at Beltsville, and Braddock Place.
The reorganization, USDA's release said, will cut the National Capital Region's 4,600 employees to "no more than 2,000."
"To bring USDA closer to the people it serves while also providing a more affordable cost of living for USDA employees, USDA has developed a phased plan to relocate much of its agency headquarters and NCR staff out of the Washington, D.C., area to five hub locations," the release says. The NCR "has one of the highest costs of living in the country, with a federal salary locality rate of 33.94%. In selecting its hub locations, USDA considered where existing concentrations of USDA employees are located and factored in the cost of living."
Similar rationales were used in 2019 during the first Trump administration when USDA moved the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, Missouri. Hundreds of employees left, and the Government Accountability Office said the decision to relocate "was not fully consistent with an evidence-based approach."
"Over the last four years, USDA’s workforce grew by 8%, and employees’ salaries increased by 14.5% - including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them," the department's release says. "This all occurred without any tangible increase in service to USDA’s core constituencies across the agricultural sector. USDA’s footprint in the [NCR] is underutilized and redundant, plagued by rampant overspending and decades of mismanagement and costly deferred maintenance. President Trump has made it clear government needs to be scrutinized, and after this thorough review of USDA, the results show a bloated, expensive, and unsustainable organization."
The buildings slated for closure "have a backlog of costly deferred maintenance and currently are occupied below the minimum set by law," according to the release. "For example, the South Building has approximately $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance and has an average daily occupancy of less than 1,900 individuals for a building that can house over 6,000 employees."
“President Trump promised to realign federal spending, eliminate duplication and redundancy, and ensure all agencies are efficiently and effectively delivering services to our constituents,” she told employees in a video.
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“Of course, here at USDA … we are doing just that by moving our key office services outside Washington, D.C., to ensure that USDA is located closer to the people we serve, while also providing a more affordable cost of living for our employees and their families.”
“As you know, 90% of our employees are already currently located outside of the D.C. area, and this move continues to best position USDA closer to our core constituents,” she said.
The reorganization comprises four pillars, the release said: "Ensure the size of USDA’s workforce aligns with available financial resources and agricultural priorities; bring USDA closer to its customers; eliminate management layers and bureaucracy, [and] consolidate redundant support functions."
A Secretarial Memorandum posted along with the release contains more details. It says:
- "The Agriculture [sic] Research Service will eliminate its Area Offices. Residual functions will be performed by its Office of National Programs.
- "The National Agricultural Statistics Service will consolidate its 12 existing regions into five USDA Hubs over a multi-year period.
- "The Food and Nutrition Service will reduce its number of regions from seven to five and align locations with the USDA Hubs and Service Centers over a two-year period
- "The Forest Service will phase out the nine Regional Offices over the next year and implementation activities will take into consideration the ongoing fire season. The Forest Service will maintain a reduced state office in Juneau, Alaska and an eastern service center in Athens, Georgia. The current stand-alone Research Stations will be consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Forest Service will retain the Fire Sciences Lab and Forest Products Lab - the former, vital for protection from forest fires and the latter, critical for assessing market development opportunities for timber and other forest products and related industries.
- "The Natural Resources Conservation Service will align its regional structure with the five USDA hub locations.
- "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service centers will remain at current locations as they are located in USDA hub locations."
One union representative who was willing to comment was critical of the plans.
AFGE Local 3247 President Ethan Roberts, a lab technician at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois, said the reorganization will be "an administrative breaking point."
"She says those positions are 'redundant' but people are already stretched thin, taking on the jobs of two to three employees," he said.
"Are we just going to stop doing paperwork?" he asked. "The law and USDA policy requires us to file certain forms to keep records. This holds government employees accountable, keeps track of tax dollars, and makes sure we're focused on our missions. People have to read and process them."
This story will be updated throughout the day.
