Half-Baked USDA Plan Makes Less Sense Even When '95% Baked'
Published: Friday, August 29, 2025
The following is from Alan Guebert, a freelance agricultural journalist from Illinois.
First, a little Trump-USDA history.
After U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers "published and funded objective analyses of issues such as climate change, the efficiency of food assistance programs, and tax cuts that mostly benefited the richest farmers ... Trump officials proposed deep cuts to USDA research agencies," reported NPR in February 2021.
Back then, however, Congress wasn't today's bottomless pit of compliance; it "wouldn't go along" with the cuts. So "the administration came up with plan B: Move two agencies—the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the Economic Research Service (ERS)—far from Washington."
And off to Kansas City both went—"closer to its farmer constituents," explained the White House. The results, predictably, were closer to catastrophe than constituents.
According to Rep. Angie Craig, the ranking Democrat on today's House Ag Committee, "About 75% of employees affected by (that) ... relocation ... declined the move, resulting in a massive brain drain while ... productivity declined at both agencies."
Which was a clear but unspoken goal of the exile: bend or be banished. No one in Congress or USDA had asked for it, but few fought it.
Now it's happening again and this time Trump political appointees are pushing an unprecedented, department-wide restructuring with ERS-like impacts on all USDA programs.
It began July 24, "without notice or input from Congress or key stakeholders and constituencies" when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a "sweeping reorganization" of USDA. Even more surprising was that Rollins never alerted anyone—Congress, press or the public—of her plan.
Not one Republican or Democratic House Ag or Senate Ag committee member and no farm or ranch leader knew that Rollins and the Trump administration hoped to move—by fiat evidently—"more than half of the agency's Washington, D.C.-area staff" to five different "hubs" across the U.S.
No worry, noted Rollins, the USDA-gutting plan—not yet seen by one person with oversight of USDA, one taxpayer or one voter—was "95% baked."
Turn down the oven, cautioned John Boozman, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the Senate Ag Committee. After admonishing USDA for not "working together" with Congress, Boozman alerted Rollins that he "will be thoroughly examining the details of the proposal ... and holding a hearing about the reorganization."
Rep. Craig, the House's ranking ag member, wasn't so collegial. On Aug. 13, she sent Rollins a six-page letter (signed by all 23 Dems on the committee) that raised more than 50 questions and asked for dozens of documents to explain the plan.
Most of Craig's questions center on USDA's "ability to provide the customer service and support our farmers and rural communities deserve. Especially given that ... (USDA) has reportedly already lost or forced out 21,600, or one-fifth, of its employees this year—the second-most workforce reductions of all federal agencies."
Rollins is not arguing for a methodical, USDA-wide review of each agency, program or office to root out this administration's poll-tested trio: "waste, fraud and abuse."
Nor is she—and whomever else is behind this "high level of indifference ... for the hard working (staff) of the Department and the Americans who depend on its services"—asking for Congressional assistance.
After all, Rollins told Politico in early August, "Most of America seems to love the plan."
Now that is a true mystery. How could most of America "seem" to love a plan that no one in America—including no one in Congress or any U.S. farm group—even had a whiff of what Rollins's team was cooking up for an already trimmed and bruised USDA?
One explanation is apparent: Rollin's remark, like this departmental reorganization, is half-baked gibberish.
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