USDA reorganization snubs ag-rich California. That is not good | Opinion

Failing to place one of five U.S. Department of Agriculture hubs in California is as ludicrous as thinking you can grow bananas on the shores of the Great Salt Lake.

That is exactly what Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is doing with her reorganization plans to decentralize the Washington, D.C.-based department whose portfolio includes farming, forestry, nutrition and food safety.

Rollins announced the revamping of the 100,000-employee department by pushing the majority of the workforce into hubs in Utah, Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri.

“American agriculture feeds, clothes and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers and producers we are mandated to support,” said Rollins in a statement last Thursday. “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.”

But why is Rollins giving the ag-proud farmers of the San Joaquin Valley a cold shoulder by opting for Salt Lake City, Fort Collins, Raleigh, Indianapolis and Kansas City?

Those cities were selected, Rollins said, based on their federal locality rates, a system of adjusting the base pay of federal workers to account for the cost of living differences across the country. For example, the Bay Area’s high cost of living gets a 46.34% rating, while El Paso, Texas gets 0%.

The rates of the hub cities range from 17.06% in Salt Lake City to 30.52% in Fort Collins. Fresno’s 17.65% federal locality rate would have been the second-most affordable had Rollins chosen California’s farm capital for a hub.

Overlooking the country’s top ag-producing state for a hub is a mistake. No other state comes close to California’s $59.46 billion in cash receipts for all commodities. Corn-rich Iowa is a distant second at $38.8 billion.

Here’s other reasons California should have been selected for a hub:

▪ The state uses 12% of all H2-A workers in the country, just behind Florida’s 14%;

▪ The state, in the city of Tulare, hosts World Ag Expo, the world’s largest outdoor ag expo with more than 1,200 exhibitors and 100,000 visitors;

▪ And the state is responsible for 70% of all fruits and vegetables grown in the country.

“In selecting its hub locations, USDA considered where existing concentrations of USDA employees are located and factored in the cost of living,” Rollins explained in her statement.

Perhaps Rollins was unaware that the Central Valley counties went for President Donald Trump last fall.

Problems with the reorganization

We have questions about the sudden move to decentralize USDA operations, and so do members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture.

Sen. Adam Schiff, the first California on that committee in three decades, told The Fresno Bee in a statement that the Trump administration’s proposal for additional USDA staff cuts and the hasty reorganization plan do “nothing to serve farmers and ranchers in California.”

“This plan announced without any consultation with Congress or the agriculture industry will only lead to more uncertainty and disruption of services for farming families and communities,” Schiff said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, questions “the administration’s half-baked plan. Our farmers and rural areas are already walloped by their obscene tariffs. Now this,” she posted on X.

“I have serious doubts that the administration adequately considered the impact of this move on research and on services for farmers and rural Americans, particularly after the loss of over 15,000 employees in the past six months,” said Klobuchar. “The USDA must come before Congress to explain why it wants to adopt this plan just as farmers have been hit with obscenely high tariffs, families have been walloped by SNAP cuts, and research grants have been frozen and reduced.”

Klobuchar is right in questioning a reorganization of the USDA without the consultation of senators from top ag-producing states.

Rollins said a “thorough review of USDA” showed a “bloated, expensive and unsustainable organization.”

“Over the last four years, USDA’s workforce grew by 8%, and employees’ salaries increased by 14.5% — including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them,” said Rollins.

The reorganized USDA will bring the department closer to its customers, eliminate management bureaucracy, consolidate redundant support services and ensure staffing aligns with available funding and agricultural priorities, Rollins said.

Decentralizing the USDA from Washington, D.C. — including vacating three buildings — is a major undertaking that should have involved discussions with federal lawmakers from major agricultural states, farmers, ranchers and the public.

This story was originally published July 30, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "USDA reorganization snubs ag-rich California. That is not good | Opinion."