Here’s the link to the announcement:
(Washington, D.C., August 1, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced today the opening of a 30-day public comment period for stakeholders to provide feedback on the Department’s reorganization plan, as outlined in the Secretary’s memorandum (PDF, 2.6 MB) issued on July 24, 2025.
“As committed, we are continuing to hear stakeholder feedback on the USDA Reorganization. All stakeholders – including Capitol Hill offices, USDA employees, and members of the agricultural community – are encouraged to share their input during the open comment period. We value your perspective as we work to ensure that USDA is best positioned to serve America’s farmers, ranchers, producers, and rural communities,” said Secretary Brooke Rollins.
“President Trump made clear his second term would include relocating the sprawling federal bureaucracy to locations outside the National Capital Region,” Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden said in his Capitol Hill testimony on July 30, 2025. “The department’s July 24 memorandum begins to deliver on this promise and does so in a way that right-sizes the USDA footprint, eliminates unnecessary management layers, consolidates redundant or duplicative functions, and, most importantly, allows USDA to deliver on its mission to the American people within the bounds of its available financial resources.”
The reorganization proposal reflects President Trump’s commitment to relocate federal agencies beyond the national capital region, reduce bureaucracy, and strengthen USDA’s presence in key agricultural regions across the country. As part of the plan, USDA will consolidate operations, close the South Building, and relocate approximately 2,600 Washington-based positions to five regional hubs: Raleigh, NC; Kansas City, MO; Indianapolis, IN; Fort Collins, CO; and Salt Lake City, UT.
USDA is conducting the reorganization under its authority established in the Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1953 (5 U.S.C. app.; 7 U.S.C. 2201 note) and The Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994 (Pub. L. 103-354). The secretarial memorandum delegates authority to the Deputy Secretary and underscores USDA’s focus on efficiency, geographic diversity, and long-term sustainability.
How to Submit Comments
All stakeholders, including USDA employees, members of Congress, and agricultural and nutrition partners, are encouraged to provide feedback by emailing [email protected]. The comment period is open through August 26, 2025.
Having spent my career in FSR&D, I would consider commenting but the Secretary’s memo doesn’t provide much information to respond to. The memo mentions consolidating all the research station HQs to Fort Collins and retaining the Forest Fire Science Lab and the Forest Products Lab. That is fine as far as administration goes but what about the labs and experimental forests where science actually gets done? Many of the labs are co-located with university cooperators. Long-term research done at places like the H.J. Andrews and Hubbard Brook EFs, for example, is critical to understanding forest ecosystems, which is essential for making sound, wise, and sustainable land management decisions. Again, the Secretary’s memo only mentions headquarters functions, does that imply research functions will be retained as currently implemented?
John, I think that they were mixing apples and oranges… between “managing R&D” (i.e., the Station overhead) and actually “doing R&D” (the RWU’s or whatever they are nowadays). Now since I posted the story from whatever the forest version of the grapevine is.. the mycelium? …I have also heard that it’s not as simple as “the FS wasn’t apprised” perhaps some folks were and some weren’t?? Whatever, we can’t tell if the authors of the reorg plan knew what they were talking about or involved anyone who did.
BUT if they are indeed talking about combining station headquarters, we could have someone involve in the NE/N merger tell us about how it worked. Our frequent contributor, Michael Rains, wrote this article post-merger https://www.grandrapidsmn.com/opinion/merger-created-u-s-forest-service-s-northern-research-station-made-a-difference-to-science/article_a25a01a0-0560-11e1-8cd1-001cc4c002e0.html
I’ll ask him what he thinks about mergers and how they work best.
Hi Sharon, merging all the stations into one would eliminate some SES positions and their administrative assistants but I don’t see what else it would accomplish. Most of the administrative functions that used to be done at the Station level moved to the Albuquerque Service Center years ago, so no big savings there. Perhaps the Secretary was thinking FSR&D would be cut as proposed by the administration. However the House and Senate committees recommended funding FSR&D at nearly current levels. Her memo is dated July 24, so she should have known that. I was a project leader in the Northeastern Station when we merged with North Central. My management responsibilities increased but I was excited about the potential for broader, large scale, and multi-disciplinary studies. It would be interesting to get Michael Rains thoughts on the merger. I know he had a vision for the new station but don’t know to what extent he feels his vision was achieved.
As for the forest “grapevine”, I think of inter-plant “communication” occurring through mycorrhiza, but there is no mycorrhiza without mycelium. Kind of a structure (mycelium) and function (mycorrhiza) comparison. Thanks for bringing it up, I haven’t thought about such things in quite a while!
Thanks, John! Good point about the structure and function.. I don’t want
They didn’t make everyone move with that merger. I think that is the biggest problem with the plan as described. It implies that all FS research station staff will have to move to Fort Collins.
The FS didn’t need the South Building any way – but they’re leaving the Yates/Auditors Building alone?! (Or maybe they don’t know it exists.)