The two US Department of Agriculture research agencies that relocated to Kansas City are now half the size they used to be, NPR reports.
In August 2018, then-USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced that the department's Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture would be moved outside DC. Critics questioned the idea, arguing that the agencies' distance from Washington, DC, would limit their effectiveness. The agency went ahead with relocating them to Kansas City, but many researchers in those agencies declined to move and there have since been delays in the release of reports and more.
NPR now notes that, despite an aggressive hiring push, the USDA research agencies are smaller than they used to be and that researchers there are juggling more work. "I've gone from running two or three programs to five, six, seven programs. We're two years behind. I can't keep up. In a situation where I'm just not happy anymore," NIFA's Desiree Rucker tells it.
Laura Dodson, the acting vice president of the ERS employees' union, tells NPR that Tom Vilsack, President Biden's nominee to lead USDA, could alleviate part of the problem by allowing new hires to be in either DC or Kansas City.