The state of Trump’s USDA: what you need to know

Shortly after being confirmed in March, Perdue announced he’d be leading the USDA’s first major reorganization since the mid-1990s. The first stage of the reorganization created a new Farm Production and Conservation mission area, and an under secretary role to support it. The mission area encompasses a wide scope of the agency’s work, including risk management, crop insurance, commodity programs, and conservation. Perdue’s reorganization also pioneered the new role of under secretary for trade and foreign Agricultural Affairs, one designed to “ensure USDA speaks with a unified voice on international agriculture issues” and promote U.S. agricultural products.Several trade associations cheered the addition. For instance, the American Soybean Association said in a statement that it and other groups had “long advocated” for an under secretary who would allow the USDA to become an important player in developing Trump’s “big ideas on trade.”The changes that most riled advocates for rural communities—who are credited with giving Trump the support he needed to win—are Perdue’s many changes to the Department’s rural development efforts. He created a new assistant to the secretary in rural development role after receiving vocal pushback from 570 advocacy groups when moving to eliminate the role of under secretary in the department and defunding the USDA’s Rural Development mission area altogether.Anna Johnson, policy programs associate at the Center for Rural Affairs, says that the new assistant secretary role doesn’t appropriately replace a Senate-confirmed under secretary for rural development. If rural development doesn’t get the same treatment as other mission areas in this regard, she says, “we don’t get that chance to get a sense for who the new leader of that enormous portfolio is going to be.” And if rural development doesn’t remain a USDA mission area, Johnson wonders how rural leadership will retain its place at the table.Secretary Perdue announced the second stage of the USDA’s reorganization in September, including moving a program of the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) under the newly-created Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs mission area, and creating a new Innovation Center within the Rural Development mission area.Perhaps most controversially, the reorganization moves the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), formerly housed across several programs, to the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).