32 Members of Congress Urge USDA to Stop Relocating Research Agencies
A legislative battle continues.
In August 2018, USDA secretary Sonny Perdue announced his intention to move the department’s scientific arm, the Economic Research Service, out of Washington.
The proposal would move the entire ERS to Kansas City, a decision seen as a way to reduce the impact of a research arm that often produces work that clashes with the anti-regulatory stance of the Trump administration. As such, the proposal was met with mass disapproval and outrage; almost immediately, more than 100 groups issued a statement protesting the decision.
The move itself is not even necessarily permitted under congressional rules, which is why a group of 32 Democratic elected officials in the House and Senate issued a letter this week, condemning the action in strong terms. It specifically asks that no funds be used to relocate the ERS out of Washington, by including provisions written by the House that would forbid such a use. This may not be totally unreasonable.
In August 2019, the Office of the Inspector General—a governmental oversight organization—investigated whether the USDA and the Trump administration had the legal and budgetary right to pursue this move. The OIG found that the USDA had not sought the required approval from Congress for the move.
The USDA ignored this, and went forward with the move anyway. As a result, according to this letter, only 16 ERS employees, out of over 300, have made the move. Partly due to the loss of staff and partly due to the logistics of the move, the Washington Post reported that dozens of research reports and millions of dollars in funding have been delayed.
This is largely seen as an intentional effect: even before the move, relations between the ERS and the Trump administration were hostile, with the USDA demanding scientists add weird disclaimers to their research and attempting to slash budgets and staff in the 2020 budget. Articles written by former ERS employees show a grim, upsetting picture of the environment in which they attempted to conduct vital agricultural and economic research.
Signatories of the letter include high-profile elected officials such as Senators Mazie Hirono and Tim Kaine. Representatives Tulsi Gabbard, and Steny Hoyer also signed the letter, which was originally authored by Representative Jennifer Wexton.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].32 Members of Congress Urge USDA to Stop Relocating Research Agencies
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
October 31, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
So we have the CDC here in Atlanta why is this not an example of moving an agency closer to its customers. It would also be so much cheaper for the employees to live. Washington has gotten so expensive that getting moved there as a federal employee is a vow of poverty.
So they disapprove of the department of “Agriculture” being moved closer to the agricultural areas? Maybe the USDA should stop getting involved in other things like home loans and make the move.
Hey Ed and Jason, Did you know that the nation’s Capitol borders Virginia, where agriculture is actually the #1 industry? It’s the #5 industry in Missouri, where the current administration is attempting to relocate ERS and NIFA.