Trump plan to move USDA spurs brain drain fears
A Trump administration plan to remove thousands of agriculture employees from Washington, D.C., is raising concerns among economists, who fear that such a move could erode expertise in a workforce reluctant to relocate.
The plan — a cost-saving strategy that would consolidate U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) operations and bring workers closer to their customers — would move 2,600 out of 4,600 D.C.-based employees to five regional hubs.
The administration’s preferred locations include Fort Collins, Colo.; Salt Lake City; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Mo.; and Raleigh, N.C. While all of these cities have existing USDA facilities, it remains unclear where each of the department’s many subgroups would be headed.
“Some of the issues these agencies are trying to address are national issues,” Chad Hart, a professor of agricultural economics at Iowa State University, told The Hill.
“Moving it from D.C. to Indianapolis doesn’t necessarily make it easier for an Alabama cotton farmer to get a hold of — or someone who does aquaculture in Maine,” he said.
The USDA’s announcement, which came from Secretary Brooke Rollins at the end of July, justified the move by describing the department’s D.C. headquarters as “plagued by rampant overspending and decades of mismanagement.”
Following the reorganization, the USDA said that it expects no more than 2,000 employees to remain in the capital — enabling the department to vacate and return several of its buildings to the General Services Administration.
The move would also enable wage cuts, as the salary surcharge to account for the cost of living in Washington is 34 percent — greater than the 30.5 percent in Fort Collins, 22.2 percent in Raleigh, 19 percent in Kansas City, 18.1 percent in Indianapolis and 17 percent in Salt Lake City, the department noted.
While the USDA initially unveiled the plans for a 30-day public comment period ending on August 31, the department ultimately extended that deadline to September 30, amid flurries of skepticism on both sides of the aisle.
Much of that skepticism comes from fears that the dispersal of thousands of agricultural officials around the country could lead to widespread resignations and the resultant attrition of expertise.
Those concerns, Hart told The Hill, are based on precedent.
During Trump’s previous term in 2019, the administration ended up relocating both the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City.
“He’s done this before with other parts of USDA, and so now he’s following that same blueprint here again,” Hart said.
Outside of the USDA, the president that same year also decentralized the Bureau of Land Management by moving its headquarters from Washington to Grand Junction, Colo.
Hart recalled that ERS and NIFA lost many people at the beginning of the moves. As such, he hypothesized that part of the motivation behind the current regionalization effort is “also to shrink the total employment in these sub-agencies.”
Although a Government Accountability Office report about the relocations observed a temporary workforce decline that ultimately recovered, Hart stressed that the agencies are “still missing a lot of institutional knowledge and operational knowledge.”
The ERS, for example, saw a decline in the number of publications issued, while NIFA’s ability to offer and evaluate grant applications decreased, according to Hart.
Such circumstances, he explains, require “a fairly substantial upfront cost that takes several years, arguably, to diminish.” He acknowledged, however, that “over time, it should and will.”
Dawn Thilmany, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Colorado State University, said she believes that the ERS and NIFA relocations were “meant to be disruptive because they know they’re going to get attrition when they move something physically.”
Thilmany, who at the time was also a visiting scholar for rural economy at the ERS, noted that “for part of that unit, it was actually more important to be near policymakers than producers.”
Many of the ERS groups, she explained, have such strong policy analysis dimensions that she likened them to the Congressional Research Service — with staffers calling and expecting answers within 48 hours.
Looking outside the USDA at the BLM example, Hart recognized that after the Trump-era relocation to Grand Junction occurred, the Biden administration “didn’t necessarily just reverse those things.” They opted to build upon what they had, instead of “creating additional costs and uncertainty by pulling everything back again,” he added.
“Say you were to reorganize in three years and bring these institutions back to D.C., you’re not likely going to get those seasoned individuals back,” Hart said. “They’ll have moved on to other jobs, other careers or other opportunities.”
One small upside that Thilmany observed from the previous USDA relocations was that because COVID-19 occurred soon after, the agencies were able to recruit “a really talented set of young people” who worked remotely.
“Now I’m seeing a huge swath of those young people exit again,” she said.
And with the upcoming shifts now being the “second round” of relocations and constant volatility, Thilmany said she doesn’t think “anyone is going to have to think really hard about if they’re going to apply for government jobs.”
“If nothing else, it’s going to possibly lower the quality of job candidates again,” she added, noting that government employment has never been seen as well-paid. “The tradeoff was that you had stability.”
Thilmany also pointed out that the units of the USDA that require proximity to producers already have facilities in those locations. Meanwhile, land grant universities like her own provide “a bridge to what’s going on in the states.”
For example, one of the many hats she wears as a Colorado State University professor includes directing the USDA’s Northwest and Rocky Mountain Food Business Center.
“Every agency should have a compelling reason why it does or does not need to be field-based,” Thilmany said.
As far as the specific five hubs are concerned, Thilmany recalled feeling bewildered that the USDA chose these geographic-based hubs rather than announcing an agency-level reorganization.
A memorandum issued by Rollins at the time said that the selection took “into consideration existing concentrations of USDA employees and cost of living.”
“It feels like in the name of expediency, this administration has not been careful thinking about implications,” Thilmany said. “This may be a possibly OK move, but not at the speed it sounds like they’re going to try to do it.”
Weighing the potential effects on the chosen communities, Thilmany said that there is evidence that certain regional-based offices could provide advantages to their areas. Some of the hubs, she explained, would be situated closer to agriculture graduate students, who could benefit from “working with government talented and vice versa.”
Regarding Fort Collins in particular, Thilmany expressed some surprise that the region was chosen, given its location in Colorado, the only blue state on the USDA’s list.
“We’re all scratching our heads,” she added.
In a statement to The Hill, a USDA spokesperson said the proposed reorganization “right-sizes” the agency’s footprint, eliminates “unnecessary management layers” and consolidates “redundant or duplicative functions.”
Most “importantly,” they added, “it allows USDA to deliver on its mission to the American people within the bounds of its available financial resources.”
“All critical functions of the Department will continue uninterrupted,” the spokesperson continued, adding that the announcement was just “a first step.”
“Some aspects of the reorganization will be implemented over the coming months while other aspects will take more time to implement,” the statement reads.
At the time of the announcement, Colorado’s two senators, both Democrats, voiced their approval in statements on social media, with Sen. Michael Bennet celebrating the forthcoming arrival of “more USDA employees to Fort Collins.”
“Colorado is the best state in the country to work, raise a family, and recreate,” Bennet wrote on X. “If done right, Colorado farmers and ranchers will benefit from having more talented USDA employees living and working in Larimer County.”
Sen. John Hickenlooper offered a similar perspective, noting on X that “Fort Collins will be a great home for the USDA’s new hub.”
“Done correctly, this will harness Colorado’s agricultural communities’ expertise and help better connect USDA’s research to the folks on the ground,” Hickenlooper stated.
For those locations slated to become regional hubs, Hart said he would expect mostly positive impacts, with local experts able to showcase their skills and farmers receiving improved services.
Yet at the same time, he stressed that the regionalization strategy “doesn’t necessarily bode well” for the national focus that many of the agencies need to uphold.
Taking a bird’s eye view of the Trump administration’s decision to relocate much of the USDA, Hart said that from strictly his own perspective, the plan “did not need to occur.”
He expressed concern that as Congress builds federal agriculture and forestry policy, lawmakers will have a much smaller base of experts to rely on at home.
Like many of efficiency-oriented moves made by the Trump administration, Hart surmised that the regionalization likely has “a cost-reducing angle to it.” But he questioned whether those cost savings will be able to occur while also maintaining or improving services.
“The stated goal of connecting these agencies better with their audiences: moving the national office doesn’t help,” Hart said. “If anything, it might hurt.”