Agriculture is a science and the research needs scientists

Another of Donald Trump's litany of failures:

An echo opinion published in The Washington Post and in the History News Network by Louis Ferleger:

Support agricultural research

Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked federal employees, most recently by proposing cuts to their retirement benefits and apparently undermining career Justice Department lawyers, several of whom have resigned. The Trump administration has similarly diminished the scientific capacity of the United States government by relocating the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture from Washington to Kansas City, Mo.

Although framed as a cost-cutting measure, many commentators have speculated that this move was designed to thin the ranks of government scientists, who would be reluctant to uproot their lives and move their families many miles. 

Indeed, significant numbers of scientists retired or found other jobs instead of moving to the Kansas City area. At the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, for example, nearly eight of every 10 employees have left.

And it’s not just the USDA. According to The Washington Post, nearly 700 scientists have left the Environmental Protection Agency in the past three years, and the EPA has hired only half that number to replace them. Overall, more than 1,600 federal scientists left government agencies in the first two years of the Trump administration.

Such moves are dangerous not just to the agricultural sector but also to the broader economy. America’s emergence by the middle of the 20th century as the world’s most successful economy relied on a key investment: the social commitment to build the capacity that enabled sustainable prosperity in U.S. agriculture. And this agricultural supremacy depended on government scientists.

But the case of U.S. agriculture has even more profound implications for understanding the sources of successful economic development in the United States. The contribution of federal, state and local governments in agriculture put into place an infrastructure (e.g., commodity price supports, supply regulations, import barriers and crop insurance) in the United States that boosted agricultural productivity and represents one of the most successful examples in modern economic history of the beneficial impact that the government can have on a single economic sector.

Today, those unacknowledged and critical public servants whose work on behalf of American agriculture in the USDA and other agencies made it possible for America to become the largest and most successful agricultural producer in the world are facing job cuts. We need to remember the contributions of their expertise, especially at a time when experts are disregarded and the ideal of public service itself is under sustained attack.

The disarming of American agriculture is already being felt. Some farmers have said that the USDA staff upheaval has made it harder to access information they need. This is all the more pressing as climate change threatens to bring droughts and further unpredictability to farms across the land.

Yet, the legacy of America’s investment in agricultural research stands in the public institutions of higher education originally established for that purpose: From Indiana’s Purdue University to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, many universities, which bring pride to states across the country, grew out of the government’s quest to help farmers. If the United States hopes to maintain its agricultural strength in this competitive century, it would be wise to replenish its ultimate investment in government science.

Louis Ferleger - Louis A. Ferleger is professor of History at Boston University and author of "Planting the Seeds of Research: How America's Ultimate Investment Transformed Agriculture."