This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The widespread layoff of Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists has thrown vital research into disarray, according to former and current employees of the agency. Scientists hit by the layoffs were working on projects to improve crops, defend against pests and disease, and understand the climate impact of farming practices. The layoffs also threaten to undermine billions of taxpayer dollars paid to farmers to support conservation practices, experts warn.
The USDA layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s mass firing of federal employees, mainly targeting people who are in their probationary periods ahead of gaining full-time status, which for USDA scientists can be up to three years. The agency has not released exact firing figures, but they are estimated to include many hundreds of staff at critical scientific subagencies and a reported 3,400 employees in the Forest Service.
Employees were told of their firing in a blanket email sent on February 13 and seen by WIRED. “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email says.
“Stopping or hamstringing efforts midway is a huge waste of resources that have already been spent.”
One laid-off employee described the weeks preceding the firing as “chaos,” as the USDA paused (in response to orders from the Trump administration) and then unpaused (in response to a court order) work connected to the Inflation Reduction Act—the landmark 2022 law passed under President Joe Biden that set aside large amounts of federal money for climate policies. “It was just pause, unpause, pause, unpause. After four or five business days of that, I’m thinking, I literally can’t get anything done,” says the former employee, who worked on IRA-linked projects and asked to remain anonymous to protect them from retribution.
The IRA provided the USDA with $300 million to help with the quantification of carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. This money was intended to support the $8.5 billion in farmer subsidies authorized in the IRA to be spent on the Environmental Quality Incentives Program—a plan to encourage farmers to take up practices with potential environmental benefits, such as cover cropping and better waste storage. At least one contracted farming project funded by EQIP has been paused by the Trump administration, Reuters reports.
The $300 million was supposed to be used to establish an agricultural greenhouse gas network that could monitor the effectiveness of the kinds of conservation practices funded by EQIP and other multibillion-dollar conservation programs, says Emily Bass, associate director of federal policy, food, and agriculture at the environmental research center the Breakthrough Institute. This work was being carried out in part by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), two of the scientific sub-agencies hit heavily by the federal layoffs.
“That’s a ton of taxpayer dollars, and the quantification work of ARS and NRCS is an essential part of measuring those programs’ actual impacts on emissions reductions,” says Bass. “Stopping or hamstringing efforts midway is a huge waste of resources that have already been spent.”
One current ARS scientist, who spoke to WIRED anonymously, as they were not authorized to talk to the press, claims that at their unit almost 40 percent of scientists have been fired along with multiple support staff. Many of their unit’s projects are now in disarray, the scientist says, including work that has been planned out in five-year cycles and requires close monitoring of plant specimens. “In the short term we can keep that material alive, but we can’t necessarily do that indefinitely if we don’t have anybody on that project.”
In a press release, the USDA has said its plan is to “optimize its workforce,” with this including “relocating employees out of the National Capital region into our nation’s heartland to allow our rural communities to flourish.” But ARS units are located across the US, each one specializing in crops that are important to local farmers as well as bringing jobs to the region. “We’ve always been very popular in rural areas because the farmers and growers actually want what we’re doing,” says the ARS scientist. The USDA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The hollowing-out of staff capacity will limit the USDA’s ability to implement IRA policies, says Bass, but it is not clear that this was the sole intention of the cuts. “This seems to be a sledgehammer to the workforce in a way that will just roll back the number of folks on payroll,” she says.
The purge could also indirectly hit farmers in red states, who are the main beneficiaries of proposals such as EQIP. “It was necessary research to preserve our agricultural lands and fight climate change,” says one ARS employee who was fired last week after serving more than two years of their three-year-long probation. “Compared to the rest of the government, ARS is tiny,” they say. “But we were able to get a lot done with relatively little money.”
On her first full day in office, US secretary of agriculture Brooke Rollins told USDA staffers gathered at its headquarters in Washington that she supported the Department of Government Efficiency’s attempt to optimize the USDA workforce. “I welcome DOGE’s efforts at USDA, because we know that its work makes us better, stronger, faster, and more efficient,” she told the gathering.
But Bass warns that blanket firing of USDA employees is hardly a pathway toward a more efficient agency. “This approach of wide-swath firings throws the USDA and affiliated agricultural research enterprise into a world of uncertainty,” she says. “Projects that cannot be seen out to the end, cannot result in a peer-reviewed research paper or technical expertise being provided, are a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
