Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said on Tuesday that “interest from across the country has been overwhelming” at the chance to house two USDA research agencies that he has decided to move out of Washington. The USDA listed 136 expressions of interest from 35 states, with sponsors ranging from a “private citizen” to real estate developers, state governments, universities, and foundations.
The USDA said it had hired the British consulting company Ernst & Young, best known as one of the world’s largest accounting firms, to help select the new locations for the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Between them, the agencies account for some 600 jobs. “It is possible that ERS and NIFA will be co-located when their new homes are found,” said the USDA. It plans to pick the new locations for the agencies by January and complete the move by the end of 2019.
Along with relocating the agencies, Perdue would take control of the ERS and move it into his executive office. The agency, whose work includes assessment of USDA programs, has been part of the USDA’s research arm for the past two decades. “A NIFA and ERS move would have long-term negative impact on the future status of food and agricultural research,” said the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “We urge Congress to intervene in this ill-considered administrative decision when it finalizes the agriculture appropriations bill later this year.”
Offers for the agencies came from locations as disparate as Salina, Kansas, the Research Triangle of North Carolina, the Greater Sacramento Economic Council in the Central Valley of California, and 18 sites in Virginia, some of them in the Washington exurbs. The shortest distance for relocation, taking the ERS and NIFA out of Washington but not outside the Beltway, was proposed by the University of Maryland, whose College Park campus is less than five miles from the District of Columbia.