Conor here: The following piece details how Trump administration cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture are hurting farmers and rural communities and threaten the prevention of diseases among plants and animals essential to the food supply.
Not great timing considered the bird flu situation.And this will likely contribute to what Matt Stoller detailed last week: how the same process that unfolded in US manufacturing is occurring in the agriculture industry. The whole piece is well worth a read, but this stood out:
A few months ago, the USDA reported something quite shocking. As of 2023, the U.S. is now a net food importer. Here’s a chart put together by Bloomberg:
For decades, the conversation about trade has been about how our manufacturing sector has been destroyed by foreign imports. The political deal underpinning this arrangement was that America would provide global security through our military, Wall Street would be the center of global finance, and U.S. farmers would export surplus grains. Meanwhile Europe would send us luxury cars and East Asia would send us everything else. There’s a reason trade agreements had their strongest support on Wall Street and among midwest farmers selling to China.
The worrisome future in this framework was that the U.S. would ultimately become a mere provider of agricultural commodities, and import critical manufactured goods, like a colony. But what we are now seeing is that this deal was a mirage; the same trends that hit our manufacturing sector are hitting our agricultural sector.
What could be the rational behind aiding in the destruction of American agriculture from Trump admin “stakeholders”? The conservative think tankers imagine the market will figure it out? The right-wing accelerationists probably believe they’ll just trade with agricultural technomonarchies? And Big Ag and finance will get to buy up distressed farms?
By Sky Chadde, senior reporter at Investigate Midwest. He has covered the agriculture industry for Investigate Midwest since 2019 and spent much of 2020 focused on the crisis of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants, which included collecting and analyzing data on case counts. He also served as the newsroom’s first managing editor, and is now a full-time reporter. Cross posted from Investigate Midwest.
Mass terminations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are “crippling” the agency, upending federal workers’ lives and leaving farmers and rural communities without needed support, according to interviews with 15 recently fired employees stationed across the U.S.
Since taking power Jan. 20, the Trump administration has quickly frozen funding and fired federal workers en masse. USDA terminations started Feb. 13, the day Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was sworn in. Rollins welcomed the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to find parts of the USDA budget to cut.
Terminated employees helped farmers build irrigation systems, battled invasive diseases that could “completely decimate” crops that form whole industries and assisted low-income seniors in rural areas in fixing leaky roofs. That work will now be significantly delayed — perhaps indefinitely — as remaining employees’ workloads grow, the employees said.
“It’s really crippling the agency,” said Bryan Mathis, a former USDA employee based in New Mexico.
Caught up in the terminations are single parents and new moms, recent hires and longtime employees, and military veterans. Some had uprooted their lives months ago to start their new career. Justin Butt, also based in New Mexico, said that without the health insurance and parental leave offered by his federal job, he and his wife may hold off on having a child.
Many of the USDA employees were on probationary status, meaning they had worked less than a year (or three years, in some instances) in the civil service. However, several had put in years working for the government and had been permanent employees at other federal departments.
The terminations have left employees distrustful and leery of returning to public service. “I don’t feel safe,” said Latisha Caldwell-Bullis, who served in the Army for 21 years before joining a USDA office in Oklahoma. “The whole reason I got back into the federal system was because it has job security.”
The USDA did not return a request for comment. In an interview with Brownfield Ag News on Tuesday, Rollins said her department has done “significant reinstatements” but added new job cuts might be coming. “I do think that moving forward, it will be more intentional,” she said.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents farmers and rural communities across the country, said cuts at USDA should be “strategic.” The farm bureau has supported the Trump administration.
“Reports are still coming in about staffing decisions at USDA, which are causing concern in rural communities and beyond,” Sam Kieffer, the farm bureau’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “USDA plays a vital role in ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, from loan officers and disaster recovery experts to food inspectors, animal disease specialists and more.
“We support the goal of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars,” the statement continued, “but we urge the administration to empower the Secretary to make strategic staffing decisions, knowing the key roles USDA staff play in the nation’s food supply.”
Leading up to the terminations, a feeling of unease pervaded USDA offices, said a former employee based in the Midwest who requested anonymity to protect job prospects. The employee’s agency within the USDA used to have regular town halls, but they were canceled after the “fork in the road” email — which promised federal workers a buyout — hit inboxes in late January. “Then, basically, it was crickets from our leadership,” the employee said.
The email that was sent to federal employees on Jan. 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer. photo credit to U.S. Office of Personnel Management
As news of mass firings at other agencies circulated, USDA staffers wondered if they were next. Some cried in offices. Others coped by telling jokes.
The firings were haphazard.
Many received the same email late at night on Feb. 13 saying they were terminated immediately. Jacob Zortman, who sold his house in Kansas in January to move to Nevada, received his work phone on Friday, Feb. 14, only to be fired the following Tuesday, he said.
Another employee said his job title was listed incorrectly on the termination letter. One said they had received an award days before their termination. Several employees said their supervisors had no idea they were fired.
Mathis, who worked for the Forest Service, received a phone call on Monday, Feb. 17, a federal holiday, from a higher-up, who told him he was fired, he said. His direct supervisor was instructed to terminate him but refused.
“It kind of went up the chain,” he said.
Doug Berry, who worked for the USDA’s Rural Development agency in Texas, said, when he attempted to get a copy of his performance review last week, it was “mysteriously blank.” He then asked his supervisor to write him a recommendation but was rebuffed. The supervisor mentioned an interview Berry gave to USA TODAY, in which he said his agency “helps the towns that voted for Trump every day.”
“I don’t know who’s watching what, but as soon as they saw my comments, any good will evaporated,” he said.
Another former USDA employee, who requested anonymity to protect job prospects, said the terminations will result in a leadership void. The job cuts affected training intended to give the new generation of leaders a holistic view of the agency.
“It’s just going to create a lot of chaos,” the employee said.
DOGE Claims Cuts Are for Efficiency
DOGE’s stated goal is to improve efficiency across the government, but former employees said they were already working on improving government service efficiencies.
When one former employee joined the department six months ago, they faced a five-year backlog. They had worked through three years when they were terminated, said the employee, who is based in a Western state and requested anonymity to protect future job prospects. Now, other workers will “have to pick up the slack,” meaning delays for projects that farmers and ranchers want done.
Stephanie Gaspar worked for a USDA agency that helped prevent plant, animal and insect diseases from entering the nation’s food supply. Her job was to decrease IT costs. “I and my team had already reduced tens of thousands of dollars of the budget,” she said. “It’s going to cost more in the long run because there’s not enough people to do this work.”
Gaspar, based in Florida, said she had worked hard to get her position. “This ultimately was going to be a career that would pull me out of poverty,” she said. “I’m not some rich federal worker. I’m a working mom.”
Rural Development Workers Axed
One of the USDA’s many responsibilities is providing financial assistance to rural, low-income communities. For example, a small town in central West Virginia requested USDA’s help to find funding for a new police cruiser.
Rural Development was also coordinating a plan to help impoverished families access transportation to medical care, said Carrie Decker, a single mom of four children who worked in the West Virginia office. “You have three generations sharing one vehicle, and people have to work and get to school, so finding time to go to a dentist appointment is not high on the priority list,” she said. The project now lacks USDA support, which could delay it.
After the Trump administration took over, she and her coworkers were instructed not to perform community outreach, which was “90% of what we do,” Decker said. Decker worries the lack of investment in rural areas — which Trump largely won in his reelection bid — will have long-lasting consequences.
“We’re going to see less funding into these critical access places that really, really need to have it and have needed it for decades,” she said. “I think what’s going to happen is these rural places across the nation are going to continue to decline instead of see the growth and opportunity that we were hopeful for.”
Two primary goals of rural development are to provide affordable housing or to help maintain low-income seniors’ homes.
One former USDA employee in the South, who requested anonymity to protect future job prospects, said they were hired to help expedite environmental compliance reviews, which were required before any funding was dispersed. Before they started, the employee said, another employee performed these duties on top of a full-time job.
The situation delayed help to seniors, the employee said. “Their roof is being covered up by a tarp because it’s been blown off by a storm, and they can’t get their grant money to get their roof fixed until compliance reviews are done,” they said. Former coworkers would “basically hound the guy to get it done. It wasn’t efficient.”
Risks of Possible Crop Disease Outbreaks
The USDA also invests heavily in preventing diseases among plants and animals essential to the food supply.
But the department fired employees working to address the bird flu that’s contributing to skyrocketing egg prices, according to NBC News. The USDA said it was trying to rehire them.
Matthew Moscou worked at a lab in Minnesota, where he helped monitor diseases that could wipe out wheat production in the U.S., he said. He spent the past two-and-a-half years learning from a long-tenured employee so institutional knowledge could be passed on, but it’s unlikely that information is retained now, he said.
“They’ve destroyed the institution,” he said.
Without labs like this, crop diseases, such as wheat-killing stem rust, could flourish, he said.
“Either we’re going to have to rethink how we’re doing this whole thing, or we’re going to have a significant collapse in the long run,” Moscou said. “This current push has really cut us off at the knees.”
Since Investigate Midwest interviewed Moscou, he has been reinstated, at least temporarily, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Something will break and then Agri X will spring into being just like NASA will eventually be replaced by Space X. Musk just had child no 14, that’s like a lot of mouth to feed, which means each child will end up running one X business. The Ubermen are here, so invest accordingly.
The firings are haphazard, as stated in the article, and affect a wide range of departments, so replace “something will break” with “many things will break simultaneously”.
I agree that will be an excuse to bring in AgriX, as you suggest, but I doubt AgriX will even be able to provide a temporary relief or a stop-gap solution because of this:
“He spent the past two-and-a-half years learning from a long-tenured employee so institutional knowledge could be passed on, but it’s unlikely that information is retained now”
The dislocation of institutional knowledge and specialized groups, the abandonment of working practices, and the lack of maintenance of information and data bases cannot be compensated at short notice or rebuilt rapidly. To have a chance of limiting the damage, the reinstatement of all those people, procedures, and services would have to be done in the very short term.
I also wonder how much of the competence of SpaceX was actually dependent on work by the NASA and poaching employees from it, and whether it can survive the slow demise of NASA on its own.
I suppose AgriX and SpaceX can bring back some of those employees as contractors but with none of the benefits or protections that they previously had.
I work for the USDA (The sub-agency of the Natural Resources Conservation Service-formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service- the agency that brought an end to the dust bowl crisis), and in my state, we do not know how many employees we have actually lost, as state leadership is fighting to protect employee privacy as well as hoping this all gets overturned, however, we feel we have lost about 20% of state staff so far (This includes people that have quit on their own and left for other jobs, as many of us have already sent out resumes, as well as those that took the so-called “deal” along with those that have been terminated (the majority of losses), along with a few that were eligible to retire who just walked). Morale is interesting- instead of being depressed, people are angry. We all feel we are being treated like criminals, and we are not having it. Many of our programs were put on hold so some payments to landowners are frozen, as is a program to address present/prevent future flood damage/erosion from recent hurricanes Debby and Helene. These were all fully funded prior to the new admin taking office. Appropriated funds for future work are under threat as well (The Inflation Reduction Act- because the Democrats insisted that these funds help address climate change- and in most cases although it does positive things for conservation, it does little to address climate change, but because the Democrats virtue-signaled, now the Republicans have to virtue signal by undoing Democrat virtue signalling- this is all so ridiculous). I am not a lawyer, but I think much of what is being done is blatantly illegal, but that does not seem to matter (of course this kind of thing was done by previous administrations, but the scale here is off the charts). The staffing situation prior to the new administration was already highly problematic- especially for engineering staff. Contrary to popular belief, the government does not pay well, and the benefits are more or less comparable to what most people get. Those of us that do this work do it for reasons other than the pay (personally, I have a good bit of operational freedom, I can literally drive around a good chunk of my state and SEE the good I have done from a conservation standpoint, and I can also see the economic impact in an area with sky-high poverty), but the kids coming out of school now absolutely have to go to where the highest pay is because of the debt load they are all carrying-the government, at least my agency, is losing the competition to hire these kids. On top of all of this, just in my office, I have seen about a 10- fold increase in demand for our services (both contracts in force and applications for assistance) in the last 10 years or so- this despite staffing levels being more or less flat. When I interact with many of the farmers/landowners I have been working with, for years in some cases, the seem almost in shock or numb to what is happening. I think those of us in my office, should we lose our jobs, are likely to land on our feet- we are actually more upset about what is going to happen to the area we live in. I figure that in the past 15 years, the 4 people in my office have managed to drag over $20 million into the area we serve- this has a bigger impact than people realize. We have made visible improvements to the environment, big improvements to water quality in some watersheds, and the money passes through many hands before it leaves the area. What is being done is enraging.
In an ideal world, where people were paid fairly for the work that they do, and the products that they personally produce, you would not need people that do what I do, but that is not the world or system we find ourselves in. I can only speak to the USDA side of this, but I can tell you all that there will be farms that will go out of business if this continues, and you will see measurable degradation of the water quality that you drink and what flows by your own homes- not to mention increase soil loss, contamination, and degraded air quality. This will also obviously increase food prices. I guess it will be good for people like Bill Gates, as farms will be going up for sale for the oligarchs to snatch up and then rent back to the peasantry.
I am so goddamn sick of this- each administration takes a bigger step toward collapsing this society. The people are going to have to do something drastic, I fear. I don’t see any other solution, as electoralism is nothing more than a distraction, clearly. I’ll end my rant, I guess- sorry for this going on so long.
I also figure I will add a couple of things- regarding the net food importer status. This is well known in the ag community. This is definitely bad, but it is not as bad as it looks.This is measured in dollars, and not tonnage. The imports tend to be higher dollar goods (Think cheeses, wines, wagyu beef, exotic lumber, etc) In raw tonnage, the US still produces a huge amount, but as stated, we export the low-value goods like a colony. The farms most under threat are dairies. The last time dairies were reliably profitable was the late 70’s/early 80’s, and that is when most of them updated their milking parlors (where the cows area actually milked) and milk houses (where the milk is stored, and where the pumps, sanitary, and cooling/heating equipment sits). Dairy infrastructure is worn out on a widespread scale. What is going to happen is that as this infrastructure starts to fail inspections due to age, we will see a wave of dairy closures. We have already lost the vast majority of dairies. This will lead toward giant CAFOs and monopolization, along with dairy shortages- causing even more imports (imports have made huge inroads against US dairies from value-added milk products), I have been trying to point this out to various state and federal lawmakers for years. Dairies cannot get loans for this because the banks know the poor economics of operating a dairy- they do not feel the big loans necessary to upgrade dairy infrastructure is a safe bet (at least for small dairies- the big ones that I know of are already in such debt that the banks are afraid NOT to give them loans).
Anyway- I would ask everyone to call their congressman, and the KEY congressman is Glenn Thompson, who is the chair of the Ag Committee in congress- he has more influence of the the farm bill and the USDA than any other person, likely including the President.
Thank you for this, Arkady. I had no idea it was this bad for this long.
Could it be that Trump and Vance have no idea how agriculture actually works as it is out of their area of expertise? Yeah, I know that Vance is from Ohio and wrote “Hillbilly Elegy” but the guy is really a corporate lawyer who then went into venture capitalism so no, he may not even know what growing corn looks like. I’m sure that people like Musk are telling them that they can forget institutional knowledge and specialized groups as all they need to do is feed enough data-points into their servers to get more efficient farming. It’s the future. Well, unless the weather destroys those crops as they had no warning as they gutted NOAA as well. Maybe the idea is to do away with small farms as economic theory says that they are inefficient and go for huge corporate latifundium instead. But the sheer level of hubris is outstanding as they think that they can wreck decades old institutions that provide critical services but have nothing to replace them with. That is, unless they are planning for a whole bunch of private corporations to step up and bid for contracts to supply those old services – for a profit of course. Should only take a coupla years to set up after they try and hire all those fired workers on the cheap. I’m sure that we can wait.
The president knows that the plants crave electrolytes. 🧃
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqIJZeeXEc
I don’t think stuff like this happens at the direction of Trump/Vance. It’s like with Supreme Court appointments – when a vacancy comes up there’s a list of preferred candidates that think tanks and other organizations have ready of suitable and vetted candidates that they have ready. So similarly I imagine that before day one there was a list created by some groups that targeted big cuts at USDA. I guess the question is who came up with that list and what are their motives (well, we know the motives or course).
Yes, the CATO institute has had a plan in place to destroy the Natural Resources Conservation Service for many years, but I am familiar with that plan and it is not what is being deployed, so although I do believe you are correct in that they are deploying someone’s plan, I am unaware of the source.
It strikes me that for T&V, breaking things may be the point. Similar to demolishing or gutting a building in order to rebuild, hopefully into something stronger and better. But in this case it’s gutting a building and also crippling the very trades with the expertise to rebuild it, if we view the USDA as the trade with the know-how to fix the entire agricultural sector.
On the other other hand, I have no idea why they would gut the NOAA, it wasn’t even broken. The NOAA was doing what they do – creating and updating maps, measuring stuff like lake and river water levels, documenting it, reporting it, you can’t mess this up. The NOAA house was government architecture at its very best, didn’t need rebuilding. So there goes my theory.
They want to privatise the potentially profitable pieces of a demolished NOAA so that those pieces can make money for their owners and so that people who can’t afford to pay for privately owned hurricane/tornado/blizzard/flood/etc. advisory services can be prevented from getting them for free.
Because the only people who deserve to know about oncoming hurricanes etc. are the class of people who can afford to pay private moneymakers for those warnings and advisories.
And there you have it. That is the reason for abolishing NOAA. When government does NOAA type stuff well, private services can’t make the money they would like to make.
You’re welcome.
This is Musk, a technocrat, who may hope to fill empty positions with private contractors. More private control of public govt functions, more public-private contracts to drain the Treasury and disenfranchise the voters. But, very very profitable.
We will see.
I have read that Musk and the others envision a world without public government where the whole world and all its people is divided up between private Silicon Feudal Warlords. And Musk is doing his best to make America into a No Government Zone to prepare for dividing it up among the Silicon TechBro BizLord Warlords.
The Republicans still want their traditional Corporate Billionaires Plantation society.
The Gilead Christian cultists, Opus Dei Vatican 2 rejectors, the Federalist Society, etc. want to take America back to the Eleventh Century and create a new Dark Age of Faith.
Privatized disease prevention (managed care and revolving-door-style public health) oversaw the US winning first place in both chronic disease burden and healthcare costs. It may be a good time to support farmers markets and backyard gardens.
>It may be a good time to support farmers markets and backyard gardens.
It’s always been a good time and here’s why if you are able to, and even directly from the farmer themselves at the gate:
https://www.good.is/this-infographic-shows-how-only-10-companies-own-all-the-worlds-food-brands
Once gas reaches $10 per gallon or more, it may be more energy efficient for the towns and small cities to have all the close-to-town farmers drive their product into farmers markets and etc. in the small towns and cities rather than have every single townsman and citizen try driving a personal car over and over to every different close-to-town farmer for every different kind of food.
Without a doubt to your comment, I wasn’t very clear in mine. I should have added that many Farmers Markets ( in this neck of the State, actually most of the State), are only weekends or one day a week during the summer season, some every other week inside during the winter. But, many of these farms have small stores on the farm that you can visit anytime. Some may sell 1/4s and sides of beef if you have the freezer space. Always good to call them about possibilities, some farms have year round subscriptions for meat, eggs, milk and other items. Keep them going, and help keep your food options available.
The enshitifying wrecking crew in action…
The biggest part of USDA workforce is Forest Service. The biggest budget area is Food and Nutrition Service (SNAP/WIC).
Agree that a programmatic approach is better than just firing the low-hanging fruit of probationary employees. Things like Agricultural Marketing and Rural Utilities Service may be “nice to have”.