Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins rocked the ag world in late July when she announced plans to completely reorganize USDA. Within days, the Senate Agriculture Committee called a last-minute hearing to discuss the implications of those changes before Congress leaves for August recess.
Among the changes Rollins proposed was a plan to relocate more than half of USDA’s Washington staff to regional hubs. Four D.C. offices will close. The Agricultural Research Service will eliminate its area offices. Various other support functions will be consolidated. Those changes include:
consolidating 12 National Agriculture Statistics Service offices into five
eliminating two Food and Nutrition Service regional offices and consolidating the remaining five into the regional hubs
eliminating nine U.S. Forest Service regional offices and four of its five research stations
How will the changes be implemented?
Responsibility for implementing those changes will largely fall on Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden. According to him, the changes will save the department approximately $4 billion. Despite only being on the job since July 7, Vaden was also the USDA representative tasked with fielding questions from the ag committee.
During the July 30 committee hearing, senators from both parties questioned why they were not consulted ahead of time. Farmers and industry groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union, were also not consulted before the plan’s release.
Vaden says USDA decided to tell employees of the plan first so they would not learn about it from outside sources.
In his opening remarks, Committee Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., praised Rollins for the work she’s done as secretary. He said he also supported her plan’s goals, including improving effectiveness, accountability and service while reducing bureaucracy and waste. Still, even he had questions.
“As we examine the proposal, we need to fully understand its implications for the people USDA serves, especially how organizations will affect USDA’s boots on the ground presence in rural America and delivery of essential services,” Boozman said.
Democrat ranking member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., was less diplomatic, calling the plan a “half-baked agenda” that she contends will result in worse service for farmers, families and rural communities.
“I want to point out that this reorganization plan was developed without the input of Congress or the very stakeholders USDA aims to serve,” Klobuchar said. “It is unacceptable that we learned about this proposal just minutes before it was announced.”
Klobuchar was among multiple senators who worry that the decision to relocate more than 2,000 D.C. employees will result in experienced employees leaving the agency. Already this year, more than 15,000 USDA workers have taken early retirements or accepted extended severance packages. Rollins and Vaden have both categorized these departures as voluntary. Multiple USDA employees say otherwise. They contend they were presented with the option, accepting incentives to leave now or face likely termination later this year.
In response to questioning from Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA, Vaden said he thinks a “large number” of those employees will relocate to the new regional hubs in Raleigh, N.C., Kansas City, Mo., Indianapolis, Fort Collins, Colo., and Salt Lake City.
“I think many of them will choose to come because, given the cuts made by other federal agencies here in Washington, D.C., the job market isn’t what it once was here,” he said. “I think that the exciting opportunity these new hubs provide for them is to actually be able to own a home affordably and grow and expand their families with a lower cost of living. That’s one of the primary reasons we chose each of these five hubs.”
If recent history is any indication, that might not be the case. During the first Trump administration, Trump moved USDA’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture outside of D.C. That resulted in a nearly 75% employee turnover.
Former USDA official concerned
Robert Bonnie served as Undersecretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation from 2021 to 2025. He also held multiple roles at USDA during the Obama administration. According to him, the reorganization plan is a “solution looking for a problem.”
Bonnie notes that implementing a plan of this magnitude without input from farm groups or Congress is extremely unusual. Like Klobuchar, he worries that the plan will cost USDA a significant number of valuable people, including many leaders. This would be in addition to the more than 15,000 people the agency has already lost since the start of the Trump administration.
“The concern with the reorganization is that they haven’t really thought about it. And if they have thought about it, they’re discounting it,” Bonnie says. “Leadership matters. Experience matters, and this is going to weaken USDA. And if you weaken USDA, you weaken the voice of agriculture in Washington.