USDA MOVE

USDA relocations curtail ag research, farmer confidence Associated Press BELLE PLAINE — More than a year after two U.S. Department of Agriculture research agencies were moved from the nation's capital to Kansas City, Mo., forcing a mass exodus of employees who couldn't or didn't want to move halfway across the country, they remain critically understaffed and some farmers are less confident in the work they produce. The decision to move the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in September 2019 was pitched as putting them closer to farmers in the nation's breadbasket, though much of their work involves advising members of Congress back in Washington. After the relocation was announced, President Donald Trump's chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, joked that moving the jobs to Kansas City was also “a wonderful way to streamline government.”