The widespread From the Ministry of Scientific Agriculture has launched vital research on disarray, according to the former and current employees of the agency. Scientists struck by layoffs worked on projects to improve crops, defend themselves against pests and diseases, and understand the climate impact of agricultural practices. Releases also threaten to undermine billions of dollars from taxpayers paid to farmers to support conservation practices, warn the experts.
USDA layoffs are part of the mass dismissal by the Trump administration of federal employees, mainly targeting those who are in their periods of probation before obtaining full -time status, which, for scientists of the ‘Usda, can be up to three years old. The agency has not published exact execution figures, but they are estimated at several hundred members of the staff of critical scientific undergoes and a 3,400 employees in the forest service.
The employees were informed of their dismissal in a coverage email sent on February 13 and seen by Wired. “The agency finds, according to your performance, that you have not shown that your new job at the agency would be in the public interest,” says the email.
A licensed employee described the weeks preceding the dismissal as a “chaos”, while the USDA stopped (in response at the controls of The Trump administration), then not used (in response to an order of the court) linked to the law on inflation reduction (IRA) – the historic law 2022 adopted under President Joe Biden who set aside large sums of federal money for climatic policies. “It was just a break, a break, a break, an inexpensive. After four or five working days of this, I think I can literally do nothing, “said the former employee, who worked on IRA projects and asked to remain anonymous to protect them from reprisals.
IRA provided USDA $ 300 million to help quantify carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. This money was intended to support the $ 8.45 billion in farmers’ subsidies authorized to IRA to be spent on the Environmental Quality Incitations (EQIP) program – a plan to encourage farmers to undertake practices with potential environmental advantageslike the coverage cultivation and better waste storage. At least one agricultural project under contract funded by EQIP was interrupted by the Trump administration, Reuters reports.
The $ 300 million had to be used to establish a network of agricultural greenhouse gases which could monitor the effectiveness of the types of conservation practices financed by EQIP and other conservation programs of several billion dollars, explains Emily Bass , associate director of federal policy, food and agriculture at the environmental research center The Breakthrough Institute. This work was carried out partly by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), two of the scientific undergoes strongly struck by federal layoffs.
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“It is a ton of dollars of taxpayers, and the quantification work of ARS and NRC is an essential element in the measure of the real impacts of these programs on programs reductions,” explains Bass. “Stopping or hammer’s hammer efforts are a huge waste of resources that have already been spent.”
A current ARS scientist, who spoke to Wired anonymously, because they were not allowed to speak to the press, says that in their unit, nearly 40% of scientists were dismissed with several employees of support . Many projects in their unit are now in disarray, says the scientist, including work that has been planned in five -year cycles and require close surveillance of plant specimens. “In the short term, we can keep this material alive, but we cannot necessarily do it indefinitely if we have no one on this project.”
