Agriculture Department to shift more than half of DC workforce to field

Olivia M. Bridges, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 24, 2025

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The Agriculture Department on Thursday said it will relocate more than half of its Washington, D.C., workforce to primarily red-state farm areas as it works to shrink its workforce under the Trump administration.

A memorandum signed by Secretary Brooke Rollins said that the reorganization is being conducted in lockstep with the department’s effort to get smaller, having already offered employees deferred resignations, voluntary early retirement and voluntary separation incentive payments.

The memo states that the department is not conducting a large-scale reduction, but notes that as of Thursday, 15,364 employees have taken deferred resignations. The agency had employed about 100,000 people as of last year.

“Focused and limited Reductions in Force will be implemented only if needed,” and only after approval by USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden, the memo said.

The USDA employs approximately 4,600 people in the area around D.C., which carries federal salary “locality rate,” of nearly 34%, an adjustment for the cost of living. The department plans to retain no more than 2,000 employees in the region.

“President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country,” Rollins said in a statement. The memo notes that in past four years, the department grew by about 8% with employee salaries increasing 14.5%.

“To ensure USDA is located closer to the people it serves while achieving savings to the American taxpayer, USDA will relocate much of its Agency headquarters and NCR staff from the Washington, D.C. area to five hub locations,” it said.

The five hubs employees will be dispersed have lower cost- of-living adjustments: Raleigh, N.C., has a rate of 22.2%; Kansas City, Mo., has a rate of nearly 19%; Indianapolis has a 18.2% rate; Fort Collins, Colo., has a 30.5% rate; and Salt Lake City has a 17% rate.

The memo also details the USDA’s plan to reduce or eliminate stand-alone regional offices and consolidate agency resources.

Among the changes, the Agriculture Research Service will eliminate its area offices and any residual functions will be performed by its National Programs Office. The National Agricultural Statistics Service will reduce its 12 regions into five USDA hubs, and the Food and Nutrition Service will similarly reduce its seven regions into five.

The memo directs the Forest Service to phase out nine regional offices over the next year, but it will retain its fire sciences and forest products labs. Phasing out the offices will be done in consideration of the ongoing fire season.

The memo outlined a dozen consolidation activities, including moving the civil rights functions into the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and legislative affairs functions into the Congressional Relations Office.

It also will consolidate Freedom of Information Act and related information management functions within the Office of General Counsel.

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