The Agriculture Department will once again relocate key research staff to Kansas City, Missouri, the agency said Thursday, doubling down on moves from the first Trump administration.
The announcement is part of the USDA’s broader reorganization, which will ultimately shift hundreds of jobs from the nation’s capital to five new “hub” offices around the country and realign staffing throughout the department.
“By streamlining operations and moving resources closer to the ground, we are making USDA more responsive, more efficient, and better equipped to support American agriculture,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a news release. “This move puts our research institutions outside of the beltway and closer to the land grant universities with talent pipelines who will lead the research and solve the problems facing the future of American agriculture.”
Officials didn’t say exactly how many positions will be relocated, but the department said jobs within the research, education and economics mission areas would be affected, including at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Economic Research Service, which lost as much as half of their workforces when the first Trump administration relocated the agencies to Kansas City in 2019.
