Thread by @TheCounter

#THREAD: One year ago, USDA relocated its research arm out of DC, forcing a large number of staffers to resign. Conversations with 20+ current & former employees paint a picture of an agency that's been hollowed out & is failing to live up to its mission. infogram.com/1p0kjlq7gnz6yq…

Over the past year, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) has lost decades of expertise on a wide range of subjects, from climate change to antibiotic resistance, from rural economies to organic farming, leaving numerous projects in limbo and severely bottlenecking new research.

Policy makers have long depended on ERS to make sense of what is and isn’t working about the way we produce, market, and access food—information used to then inform policies that address challenges within the food system, from climate change to Covid-19. thecounter.org/usda-research-…

Now, as one sustainable farming advocate put it, those steering our food system may as well be “asleep at the wheel.”

For one, the relocation directly disrupted ongoing work. Employees report having to scramble to preserve their research, while the agency’s editorial team lost almost every single one of its members, creating a bottleneck in the publishing process. infogram.com/1pp0nq6727ek6y…

“The number of reports has fallen off sharply,” said one former economist. “It’s greater than zero—but it’s pretty close to zero.”

Reports on tariffs, farm workers, honey bees, herbicide resistance, and antibiotic use in animal production are all among the work forfeited or delayed in the transition, according to an internal memo shared among staffers and reviewed by The Counter.

This all represents a significant erosion of information for USDA and Congress, both of which depend on this guidance to make vital decisions related to the food system.

Long-term, some fear that the knowledge vacuum left within ERS could make lawmakers more reliant on biased information or industry influence.

For now, those who remain at the agency today say that the repercussions of the move continue to affect their research every day.

While USDA touts its active hiring efforts, current staffers appear unappeased: “I find it so frustrating every time [leadership says], ‘We’re doing record hiring,’” one said. “You’re doing record hiring because we had a record exodus of employees.” thecounter.org/usda-research-…