Ag economists criticize USDA plans to move research agencies, object to suppression of their research

In their most recent "Policy Pennings" column, Harwood Schaffer and Daryll Ray of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center at the University of Tennessee take the U.S. Department of Agriculture to task for moving two of its research organizations from Washington D.C. to Kansas City. The Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture are slated to make the move in the fall.

Schaffer and Ray also object to the Trump administration's moves to suppress ERA and NIFA findings, especially on climate change. "This type of behavior does not serve the public well and is contrary to the kind of analysis we rightly expect from USDA funded research in which USDA scientists are often directly involved."

"From our perspective both of these decisions reflect the administration’s hostility to the 'deep state.' What the administration calls the deep state we see as the apolitical work of the dedicated civil servants who carry on their work regardless of the political affiliation of the administration that happens to be in power," Schaffer and Ray write. "One of the reasons the US established an apolitical civil service was to have employees who would do their work based on their expertise and not their political connections. Their dedication is to their science and their fulfilling the requirements of their job descriptions and not to spinning their work to accommodate the political winds of the day."

The decision to move the agencies has been widely criticized as a political move meant to force employees to quit rather than relocate, allowing the administration to install more loyal employees. The administration says the move is meant to bring the agencies closer to regional stakeholders and save money. However, an independent analysis estimates the move would actually cost taxpayers millions more. The government union many NIFA workers joined last month predicts that so many employees will quit that the agency will be less able to award grants to land-grant universities and other institutions, Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder.