Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins says her reorganization plan is designed to return USDA to its “core mission” and put “America First,” all without sacrificing services provided to U.S. farmers.
Among the goals of the plan: Put USDA employees geographically closer to farmers and save money on salaries and office space. The plan aims to “achieve improved effectiveness and accountability, enhanced services, reduced bureaucracy and cost savings for the American people.”
But she, in line with President Trump’s oft-stated desire, also just wants to get employees out of Washington, a city that has been the target of Trump’s barbs. In an X post promoting an interview she had with Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, she said, “It has always been @POTUS’ vision to drain the swamp out of Washington, D.C. — and we are delivering on that promise!”
“This is literally what he has tasked his cabinet to do, to deconstruct the administrative state in Washington, D.C.,” she told Hemmer.
Critics of the plan, however, note that USDA has already lost some 18,000 employees through voluntary buyouts and other departures and that 90% of USDA employees already live outside the national capital region.
“We're going to lose really good people, and that's going to hurt research,” said Robert Bonnie, undersecretary for farm production and conservation under Secretary Tom Vilsack during the Biden administration. “It’s going to hurt leadership, it’s going to hurt morale. If you want to weaken the agency, you show the door to your best people, and that's what they're doing.”
Republican lawmakers generally are supportive, but Democrats are not. The Senate Ag Committee's ranking Democrat, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, was especially critical of both the abrupt roll-out of the plan and its contents. She told Agri-Pulse this week she's worried that agency leaders will have a hard time connecting with support staff.
Robert Bonnie (USDA photo)The plan foresees relocating 2,600 of 4,600 staff in the National Capital Region to hubs in five cities: Salt Lake City, Utah; Fort Collins, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Some regional staff also would be moved to the hubs. The South Building in Washington would be vacated, as would Braddock Place in Alexandria, Virginia, which houses the Food and Nutrition Service. The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland would be gradually shut down. Agricultural Research Service regional offices would be consolidated, as would some administrative functions under a new organizational flowchart.
It has been described as a reorganization, but its key characteristic is relocating people out of the Washington area.
"USDA has and will continue to fully leverage voluntary programs such as the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIPs)," a July 24 secretarial memo from Rollins says. "The department will also leverage directed and voluntary reassignments to ensure the workforce is aligned with mission priorities. Focused and limited reductions in force will be implemented only if needed and only after approval by USDA's deputy secretary."
ERS/NIFA move is 'blueprint'
Tom Bewick, a representative of the American Federation of Government Employees who works at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, told Agri-Pulse that the move of the Economic Research Service and NIFA at the end of the first Trump administration serves as the template for the latest relocation. In that case, most staff left the agencies, with some being rehired. During the COVID pandemic, some worked remotely.
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"You can go back to the first Trump administration and look at what happened," he said. "That's the blueprint. The words coming out of the administration are almost identical to the words they used in the first go-round."
Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden oversaw that transition as well and was likely to field questions about it at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday at the Senate Agriculture Committee. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report said USDA made the ERS/NIFA move without "key evidence," such as costs due to attrition or loss of services.
In addition, an analysis by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association concluded that the move would cost taxpayers $83 million to $182 million, and not – as then-Secretary Sonny Perdue claimed – save $300 million over 15 years.
Ohio farmer Chris Gibbs, a former Republican who is now a county chair for the Democratic Party, said Rollins “continues to say we want to get USDA closer to our farmers. Farmers already have that and you're cutting the staff that we have direct access to and on up the line.”
He said there would be no reason for him to travel to Indianapolis. “Am I going to get better service? No. I want my local USDA office. I want that service when I walk in there, and I want to make sure they're staffed because that directly affects me. That directly affects farmers."
Not everyone interviewed had a negative view. Bruce Knight, NRCS administrator during the George W. Bush administration, said "the thought of pressing reset and downsizing the D.C. presence, while maintaining the farmer focus, is healthy and needed and positive."
"It's disruptive for the people that are involved, but for the service to the farmer, this should be given a chance to work," he said.
Bruce Knight (Bruce Knight photo)Nikki Gronli, who was state rural development director in South Dakota during the Biden administration, told Agri-Pulse she likes the idea of getting employees out of D.C. and closer to farmers, but fears the reorganization plan won’t accomplish that goal.
“They're going to take the top of USDA and move it to five cities – not rural, they're going to five cities.” Rollins' secretarial memo also contemplates colocating "regional offices and other similar management layers ... in the hub locations to the greatest extent possible."
Fly-ins could become more difficult
Gronli and Bonnie also noted that removing leadership from D.C. will make it more difficult for farm groups to meet with officials when they fly in to the capital. Usually on such trips, farmers go to Capitol Hill but also meet with government officials at a host of different agencies.
“Where can I find NRCS and their administrator in the future? Where can I find the Farm Service Agency administrator in the future? And when I have to go find them, they're not all going to be in the same location,” Gronli said.
How many will move? ERS and NIFA lost about 75% of their employees due to the move to Kansas City, but Rollins said that she expects 50% to 75% of leadership targeted in the reorganization to accept relocation.
Xochitl Torres Small, one of two deputy secretaries under Vilsack, said she was struck by what Rollins said in her five-page memorandum. The memo says USDA is reverting to its “core mission” of serving U.S. agriculture, and adds, “Reductions and impacts to wildland firefighting, inspection, and farmer and rural community front-line facing positions will be minimized.”
“That, in and of itself, acknowledges that there are going to be impacts,” she said. “The people who are already sometimes struggling to get an answer [from USDA], especially with the kind of haphazard, deferred, voluntary separations that have occurred, it's impacting all across USDA in a way that can't really be controlled.”
She and Bonnie said they’re also worried about the effects of the department’s plan to eliminate nine regional firefighting offices over the next year.
“That is a well-established system, and the idea that they're going to start now and then it's supposed to be implemented during a fire season, because it's a year for implementation, is pretty concerning,” she said.
Farm groups have mostly been quiet. However National Farmers Union President Rob Larew said, “We are concerned that large-scale restructuring or relocation of agency offices could result in significant staff turnover, loss of institutional knowledge and service disruptions at a time when farmers, ranchers and their communities critically depend on these services to stay afloat.”
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition went further. Policy Director Mike Lavender said the department should pause the reorganization to gather public comment.
“Without input from farmers, the proposed USDA reorganization would close offices and lead to further staff reductions – and ultimately farmers would pay the price,” Lavender said. “Improving USDA to better serve farmers and ranchers is a noble undertaking – but [the] announcement fails to connect the dots between a mass staff relocation and the resultant staff loss and expanded economic opportunity for all farmers and ranchers.”
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