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WASHINGTON (DTN)-- USDA's planned relocation of the Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City is prompting comparisons to the agencies' 2019 move -- one that resulted in a 75% loss of the relocated workforce and a lengthy hiring process.
Now, NIFA leadership told DTN the agency has learned from that experience and could offer lessons for other USDA mission areas facing relocation.
"One of the benefits that we have is indeed that 2019 experience in terms of actual lived experience and making that transition,"
Jaye Hamby, NIFA's director, told DTN last week in St. Louis.
He explained there are practices the agency would continue and others it would do less of. He cited structural changes, including reorganized divisions and more automated grant-administration processes, that could help the agency absorb staff losses and make the transition different from that in 2019.
The same lessons, he mentioned, "are applicable across the department."
Union members and other USDA employees, however, point to the 2019 move as a cautionary tale of what can happen when experienced employees leave faster than an agency can replace them.
According to AFGE Local 3403, the union representing NIFA and ERS employees, only 6% of employees said they would relocate if required. Sixty-nine percent said they would leave instead, while the remainder were unsure. The Biden administration restored the agencies' headquarters to Washington, D.C. in 2021, though the Kansas City offices remained operational.
Those numbers are similar to the results of the 2019 relocation.
Laura Dodson, vice president of AFGE Local 3403, said that by the end of the fiscal year in the first transition, 5% of ERS employees had reported to Kansas City, and 10 of 294 NIFA employees had. "For every new employee ERS managed to hire that year roughly seven people left. At NIFA, it was closer to 12," she said.
The result, according to a 2022 Government Accountability Office report, was that ERS produced about half as many research reports and journal articles in 2020 compared with prior years. In NIFA, grant processing slowed, some programs suspended reviews entirely and capacity grants to land-grant universities went unprocessed for the first six months of fiscal year 2020.
The stated objectives for the move were to improve its ability to attract and retain highly qualified staff, place its resources closer to stakeholders and consumers, and reduce costs to taxpayers. However, GAO found that USDA's economic analysis did not fully align with those objectives.
"I'm not asking you to imagine what happened. I'm asking you to look at what the government's own auditors already found happened the last time to this exact agency under this exact plan," Dodson said on a call with other union leaders last Thursday.
ERS and NIFA, both part of USDA's Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area, received relocation notices in April. A significant portion of employees in the National Capital Region are expected to move to Kansas City by Oct. 5, while remote and regional employees have also been told they need to relocate.
NIFA administers grants and other funding programs supporting agricultural research at land-grant universities and other institutions. ERS analyzes economic and statistical data and produces widely relied-upon research and reports on agriculture, food and rural economies.
"We certainly hope that every one of our employees could make that journey to Kansas City, but we also know that again, everyone's journey may not afford them that opportunity," Hamby said. "I have confidence we'll weather that transition effectively and still execute our agency's objectives and obligations."
RELOCATING AND HIRING
Hamby acknowledged that some positions and divisions will be more affected than others.
"There's been some areas where, again, those who accepted those DRP roles, it's just been perfect -- right-sizing that given area. On the other hand, there have been some areas that maybe were impacted more fully," he said.
To prevent such an example from happening again, DTN asked Hamby if forward staffing is being done to prevent this.
"We do have a hiring process that is spinning up literally right now," he said.
But NIFA did not provide additional details about the hiring process or say whether the 189 employees at NIFA, 94 at ERS and 283 at NASS who have left between 2025 and 2026 have been replaced.
The experience of 2019 offers a potential preview.
When the relocation took effect on Sept. 30, 2019, ERS saw its workforce decline to roughly 33% of its regular staffing level four months later. Intense recruitment did not begin until March of the following year, with the agency holding its first career fair in April, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
Whether the agency is being restaffed is being investigated by lawmakers too, beyond ERS and NIFA. On Monday, 22 U.S. Democratic senators sent a letter to Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden regarding Rural Development, asking whether the agency is preparing to recruit after expected staffing losses.
"Given the significant depletion of staff, is Rural Development hiring now or planning to recruit new staff in the next three months? If so, for what positions and where?" the letter asked.
Generally, USDA has acknowledged that deferred resignation programs and reductions in force can reduce staffing, setting targets for employee departures in 2025. The July-released Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan (ARRP) also called for staffing cuts of 43% at ERS and 39% at NIFA.
LESSONS LEARNED
NIFA leadership says the agency is better positioned for another transition to Kansas City because it can apply lessons learned from 2019.
Those lessons include using less "people dependent" grant administration and having a workplace ready, not moving to a new one.
Unlike other mission areas facing potential relocation, NIFA and ERS, which are located at 805 Pennsylvania Avenue in Kansas City, already have an established presence in the city, with facilities, employees and institutional relationships that could make the transition easier.
But one former USDA economist said it's not the right move.
"I made the move in 2019 because I believed in the work. I do not endorse doing it again. The first relocation cost years of capacity the agency was still rebuilding when Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS) was cancelled. There is no efficiency case strong enough to justify doing this twice," former agricultural economist for the USDA, Matthew Rabbitt, said in a LinkedIn post.
He said the repeat of the staffing losses seen in 2019 could put several major reports and research programs at risk, including the Farm Income Forecast, Food Price Outlook, Household Food Security in the United States, Rural America at a Glance and other ERS rural research, among others -- without staff to do them.
At least 38 reports were delayed or discontinued in 2019.
See our reporting: "Next Chapter at ERS Likely Delayed or Discontinued,"
In a Sec. Perdue era internal memo, "Due to decreased staffing levels, ERS will for considerable time be unable to provide the same level of breadth and depth in its economic research and outlook analysis as it did in the past," the agency admitted.
Despite history, Hamby reassured against cuts, "We have put in infrastructures, policies, procedures...that we can execute our agency's mission."
Union leaders said remote work saved the agency in 2019 by allowing workers to come back or allowing the agency to meet them where they were living. This time, remote work is not an option for most employees facing geographic reassignment. "The door that saved the agency the last time is closed."
For Dodson, the experience of 2019 leaves little ambiguity about what another relocation could mean. "That's not a relocation. That's an exodus."
-- Democrats' Letter to USDA on Rural Development Hiring
https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/…
-- See the 2022 GAO Relocation Report:
-- See the Congressional Research Service Report:
Jake Zajkowski can be reached at jake.zajkowski@dtn.com
Follow him on social platform X @jzajkow
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