“It’s hard not to perceive this as a political calculation rather than one that’s in the best interests of farmers, given our dominance in agriculture,” Schiff said, citing other cuts USDA has made to assistance for California farmers over the last few months. “What do you have to say to California farmers who are feeling that the administration, the president, is not representing them, but he’s punishing them because the state didn’t vote for him?”

Senators from both parties asked Vaden whether important agricultural research would be impacted, since the USDA plan directs the Agricultural Research Service to eliminate its area offices. Vaden assured them only four of 94 research centers are being closed and that the closing of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, where long-term field trials on sustainable agriculture have been ongoing for decades, will happen “slowly.”

Several senators expressed concerns about how many skilled and experienced employees would leave USDA rather than move, and if a further cut to staff would also affect USDA’s ability to serve farmers efficiently. The agency’s staff has already been reduced by 15,000 employees since January due to the resignation package offered.

During the last Trump administration, the USDA moved the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City, Missouri. Reports later found the move led to the ERS producing half the number of economic reports and longer grant processing times at NIFA. Vaden said the agency had learned important lessons from that experience and that they expect to have “better results this time around.”

While the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) barely came up during the hearing, Robert Bonnie, who was part of the USDA leadership team during the Biden administration, told Civil Eats he’s concerned about the loss of senior leadership at the NRCS, who may be less likely to relocate, especially at a time when staffing cuts have left farmers with less help.

The NRCS currently has four regions based on states that share conservation concerns. For example, farmers in Western states might need more assistance with irrigation, while farmers in the Northeast might be accessing conservation programs to protect against flooding. USDA’s reorganization plan proposes changing those regions to align with the five new hubs, but those groupings won’t stem from conservation priorities.

“They act like the design of USDA is some random thing they’re trying to fix, but the reason it looks the way it does is because it actually works pretty well,” Bonnie said. “I don’t know what the problem we’re trying to solve here is, unless what you want to do is dramatically reduce the size of the agency, the ability to service farmers and ranchers be damned.” (Link to this post.)