Recent changes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture threaten farmers who are already struggling. Though framed as an efficiency measure, advocates say a proposed drastic re-organization of the agency would destroy the USDA from the inside and weaken, if not eliminate, crucial support systems that farmers and rural communities need now more than ever.
What is the proposed USDA restructuring, and how does it impact farmers?
Agriculture Secretary Susan Rollins first announced the USDA restructuring plan last summer, without consulting Congress, farmers or other stakeholders. Among other things, the plan would move about half of the agency’s Washington, D.C.-based employees to “regional hubs” in North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Colorado and Utah.
The Donald Trump administration says the change will save taxpayers money due to the lower cost of living outside the D.C. area, while simultaneously framing the plan as a way to reduce Beltway bureaucracy and centralize more USDA employees near rural areas.
But farming advocates and union groups warn that many of the most skilled workers would sooner leave the agency than take a pay cut to uproot their lives and families with a cross-country move, which is essentially what happened the last time the U.S. tried to do this.
Trump initially took steps to dismantle the USDA during his first term, including the relocation of essential research offices from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City. About 75 percent of workers facing relocation chose to leave the agency instead, including highly experienced researchers and staffers. Though promoted as a $300 million savings for taxpayers, experts estimated a loss of up to $182 million due to staff attrition, with a knock-on effect of $2.8 billion due to a shortfall in USDA guidance for farm bill expenditures.
Farmers, federal workers and concerned citizens fear the same thing will happen this time around. Out of more than 46,000 public comments on the plan, 82 percent expressed serious concerns over staffing, oversight and the loss of experienced personnel at the USDA.
When the American Federation of Government Employees union surveyed its members in Washington, around three-quarters said they would not relocate.
“By forcing this move on an accelerated timeline, with no promise of financial help or job security, the USDA is effectively dismantling decades of institutional knowledge, jeopardizing the very data and funding that farmers, policymakers and land-grant universities rely on,” the union told the Federal News Network this spring. The Food Research & Action Center similarly warned of a “significant brain drain” at the agency.
Death by a thousand cuts: Though few support it, USDA pledges to go ahead with the reorg
Despite the unpopularity of the idea, at the end of July the USDA confirmed it plans to go ahead with the massive reorganization and forced relocation of nearly 3,000 workers.
Advocates say it couldn’t come at a worse time. The USDA is already down more than 24,000 workers since the beginning of last year. Most left as part of the Deferred Resignation Program, a budget-cutting effort led by the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Headed by billionaire Elon Musk and staffed mostly by young tech workers with no policy backgrounds, DOGE offered buyouts to around 15,000 USDA employees and summarily fired thousands of others.
Despite the supposed focus on shifting the agency from Beltway-centered to be more closely connected with rural communities, almost all (98 percent) of the USDA staff lost since last year were based outside of Washington, D.C., according to a National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition analysis.
As the agency lost 1 in 5 staff, farmers are facing a financial strain at levels not seen in decades. Farm debt is at an all-time high, and 70 percent of farmers said they couldn’t afford the fertilizer they needed this spring. That’s all while a Super El Niño weather event threatens a return to the Depression-era “dust bowl” conditions of the 1930s, while a parasite eradicated 60 years ago has reemerged on U.S. livestock farms.
Critics of the USDA reorganization are concerned it will further cripple the inspection services that contain disease and delay program delivery when farmers most need it.
Disease outbreaks put even more pressure on farmers while risking public health
Screwworm, a species of fly that lays eggs in mammals, can spread quickly through livestock populations and is often deadly in animals such as cows, sheep, pigs and horses. It was virtually eradicated in the U.S. by the 1960s, but constant vigilance is needed to prevent spread from South America, where the parasite is still endemic.
The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) last year effectively halted all joint screwworm monitoring and containment efforts in Central America.
By June, the first U.S. screwworm case in over half a century was reported on a Texas farm, and the parasite has since been detected in 45 cases of animal infection in Texas and New Mexico. Critics say the USDA is far behind on measures needed to control local outbreaks amid already ongoing staffing shortages at its agencies.
The agriculture industry is also threatened by ongoing diseases including HLB, which has systematically destroyed orange groves in Florida and is now attacking California. Other pests of rising concern include the glassy-winged sharpshooter, recently spotted in California wine country.
Those threats have largely flown under the radar of the general media, but the recent “explosive diarrhea” parasite outbreak brought the consequences of reduced oversight squarely into the spotlight.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 6,707 laboratory-confirmed cases of domestic-sourced cyclosporiasis infection from May through July, far eclipsing the total recorded during the last major outbreak in 2019. Two people have died, and the CDC is investigating more than 11,000 additional cases of the parasitic infection across 15 states.
This comes roughly a year after the Trump administration “stopped tracking the parasitic infection cyclospora through the CDC, USDA, FDA and 10 state health departments,” The Hill reported last month. “Surveillance of cyclospora had previously been mandatory since 1997.”
Advocates fight back
Ultimately, it is up to Congress to exercise its authority to direct how and where the USDA spends its funds, but that is unlikely to happen as long as Trump-allied Republican representatives hold the majority.
The federal judiciary may yet provide some relief. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union is among those going to court to stop the USDA reorganization plan.
“This administration is trying to gut the agency that helps farmers stay in business and puts food on working families’ tables so it can hand out even more tax cuts to billionaires,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a July press statement.
A request for an injunction filed against the USDA reorganization will be heard in federal court in California on September 1.
In the meantime, U.S. farmers will simply have to wade through the consequences of diminishing oversight and converging external factors: a rise in farm debt and bankruptcies, a 63 percent increase in the cost of diesel fuel, and a spike in the cost of fertilizer alongside the impacts of Trump’s tariff wars and his terrorization of migrant farm workers.
Image: Justin Simmonds/Unsplash
