Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced on Thursday, Aug. 9, that the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) will both literally and administratively move.
In the literal sense, Perdue said the ERS will be relocated outside of the Washington, D.C., area. Administratively, the ERS will “realign” under the USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist. Currently, the ERS is part of the USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics office.
Both of these moves were said to be in the interest of saving money and to “provide more streamlined and efficient services.”
According to a report by DTN’s Jerry Hagstrom, the announcement was subject to immediate criticism, with Ricardo Salvador, senior scientist and director of the Food and Environment Program at Union of Concerned Scientists noting that the USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist is more of a political rather than statistical office.
“Bringing ERS closer to the direct supervision of a political appointee could potentially limit the integrity and autonomy of agency research,” Salvador said.
There is no current new location for ERS, but the announcement said that personnel relocation should be completed by the end of 2019. The USDA is “exploring potential sites for a proposed new headquarters location,” according to a Federal Register posting seeking stakeholder input on the move.
USDA is seeking “expressions of interest from state and local governments” for two campuses, one for the ERS and the other for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, with an expected total of 620 employees.
Link for website posting: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/08/15/2018-17555/notice-of-request-for-expression-of-interest-for-potential-sites-for-headquarters-office-locations
