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The vast reorganization announced last week by Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins received mostly negative reviews from current and former USDA employees, who said it would result in the loss of expertise and make it more difficult for farmers to connect with agency officials.

A JBS production plant in Iowa is issuing deportation notices to employees from Haiti, Cuba, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The House is now out of session until September. But Ag Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson says committee staff will be working through August on the next iteration of the farm bill. He says the legislation will be a “high priority” for the panel.

USDA has finally released its reorganization plan after months of speculation and court battles. It calls for moving more than half the employees in the national capital region to hubs in five states: Colorado, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Utah.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., and the ranking member, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, have called for a hearing on USDA’s reorganization plan. Klobuchar told reporters the plan was “unacceptable” and said it would “decimate research work at the USDA.”

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.

Agricultural Research Service labs and offices are being told to prepare for a funding shortfall at the end of the fiscal year that amounts to about 10% of the agency’s annual budget, ARS employees are telling Agri-Pulse. A USDA spokesperson, however, said the Department does not anticipate any funding shortfalls to occur. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be at USDA today for what’s being billed as a “major announcement.” He’ll be joined by Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins, FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, and Michael Dykes, president and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association.

Senate appropriators unanimously advanced a more moderate, bipartisan plan for 2026 funding levels at USDA, FDA and rural development agencies than their House counterparts, with boosts to WIC and measures to prevent field office closures. 

The Trump administration is planning unspecified steps to “claw back” farmland belonging to Chinese-owned agribusiness giants Smithfield Foods and Syngenta, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said. On ag labor, Rollins said there would be no "amnesty" for farmworkers but that the administration would be "strategic in how we are implementing the mass deportations so as not to compromise our food supply."