Fired USDA scientists being hired back, but they may lack critical support staff

USDA is rehiring scientists in the Agricultural Research Service who were summarily fired because they had not completed probationary periods, according to union representatives.

Skye Carpenter, president of Local 3748 of the American Federation of Government Employees, said most research scientists had been reinstated. Her local represents ARS employees in the northern Plains and the Midwest.

However, the layoffs also hit lower-level scientists, lab technicians and support staff, whom Carpenter called “the bulk of people needed to help get the research done.”

“Some projects, such as pulse crops, only had a [Category 3 support scientist] who is still not reinstated but crucial to the project. Without them, we are unsure what will happen” to those projects, she said.

Sources estimated the layoffs affected about 800 employees at ARS, which has about 7,000 people, according to the agency’s website.

Widespread layoffs of probationary employees appeared to hit all areas of USDA, including ARS, often recognized as the premier agricultural research organization in the world. In its more than 70 years of existence, ARS scientists have developed the Roma tomato and discovered how to eliminate screwworms from the United States — among a plethora of accomplishments.

But ARS, like so many other agencies throughout the federal government, has not been immune to the cost-cutting spree launched by the "Department of Government Efficiency," which appears to be run by Elon Musk.

The problem, say critics, is that DOGE is using a sledgehammer, not a scalpel, to fire people.

“You can't make cuts indiscriminately and expect that there won't be significant negative impacts on agriculture,” said Jim Cudahy, CEO of the Alliance for Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies.

Jim Cudahy (Photo from LinkedIn)

“This has been such a blunt trimming of the ARS workforce,” said former research agronomist Mark Bernards, who as of Tuesday had not been reinstated. “It doesn't take into account how the mission of ARS to solve agricultural problems for the American taxpayer and farmer is going to be fulfilled.”

USDA has not responded to inquiries about the number of employees let go, but the department did say last week it was trying to rehire avian flu researchers after it was reported they had been terminated.

Probation periods vary depending the type of job. Many at USDA were on one-year probations, but the term can be two or three years. Bernards’ probation period was three years.

Bernards lost his job at ARS’s Morris, Minnesota, lab earlier this month, where he says he was “developing weed management solutions for pennycress and camelina, two new winter oilseed crops that will be used in the sustainable aviation fuel market someday.”

He came to ARS after 18 years in academia — as a professor at the University of Western Illinois and at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He had been in his job for a year and nine months, received performance awards, and was under consideration to be research leader at the Morris lab.

Then he was laid off, which as a self-professed “news junkie” did not entirely surprise him. However, “a few days out, I'm quite disappointed — less for myself as an individual, but because I don't see that the work that I was doing being carried on by anybody.”

“I was the only one in a public sector role that was studying herbicide management in pennycress,” he said.

Michelle Starke, regulatory and stewardship lead at CoverCress Inc. of Olivette, Missouri, said Bernards’ work is vital to the success of the crop being marketed by the company. (CoverCress was developed from pennycress.) 

Starke said the IR-4 Project, which supports registration for minor crops and pest control product registrants, has been "very helpful in supporting some product registrations for use in the crop. And Dr. Bernards has been a collaborator with IR-4, and his work has been very, very helpful to determine which herbicides might have the opportunity to be registered for use in pennycress."

Chris Stelzig, who heads the Entomological Society of America, echoes Bernards’ point about the uniqueness of scientists’ research.

Entomology is a “mile wide and an inch deep,” Stelzig said. There are countless species of insects but often a handful of scientists to study them. “If you let one or two of them go, you’ve got nobody. Then it's not just a short-term problem, it’s a cascading, compounding problem.”

Stelzig said ESA has heard “heartbreaking case after heartbreaking case” about firings, many of which affected younger people just beginning careers. Others left “tenure-track or fully tenured university positions to join the federal service because they believed in the mission.” In some cases, scientists uprooted their lives for their dream jobs, only to be told “your work's got no value here.”

Bri Walker, a secretary at ARS’ National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria who was let go, said she’s not as worried about her future because she was on the administrative side of the operation. But she worries about the loss of research capability and the scientists doing it.

“At the end of the day, the private sector can absorb me pretty easily,” she said. Scientists, however, may have “nowhere to go” after spending years working to obtain advanced degrees.

Those interviewed by Agri-Pulse pointed to a wide range of research that could be affected. At NCAUR, which lost nearly 10% of its 168 employees, the plant polymer research unit was “devastated,” Walker said.

Ethan Roberts, president of AFGE Local 3247, told Agri-Pulse that half the 20-person unit was let go.

Polymer research focuses on making products from underutilized crops or from parts of a plant that are not being used. Corn zein, the chief protein in corn, is one of those, Walker said.

"It can be used to nano-encapsulate things, which is great for pesticide applications,” she said.

Other research at the lab focuses on stopping Fusarium graminearum, a fungal plant pathogen that causes fusarium head blight in cereal grains, she said.

Although termination notices told employees they were fired because of their performance, Roberts said most employees at the NCAUR had not received performance reviews. And he said that none of the supervisors he spoke with “had any problems whatsoever with their employees.”

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