Economic Research Service: reliable information's last stand?

Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue announced last week that he will move the USDA Economic Research Service out of Washington, D.C., and place the agency under the management of USDA Office of the Chief Economist. Also involved in the reorganization and relocation is the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, another research agency.  The Daily Yonder uses material from the Economic Research Service routinely. We republish ERS research reports or quote from them extensively. We refer to their background articles on topics like rural population, poverty, farm income, natural resources, nutrition and more. The ERS “Rural America at a Glance” and “The Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America” are standard references in the field of rural policy. There is no comparable public source of information about the economic and social conditions of rural America.  “Moving skilled USDA ERS and NIFA employees out of Washington, D.C., and under the supervision of the Office of the [Chief Economist] politicizes, and therefore fundamentally endangers our country’s capacity for agricultural research and development. The reasons provided for this decision are meritless: moving the agencies put them at risk for losing experienced, high-level employees; does nothing to improve the agencies’ responsiveness to rural stakeholders; and in the end will cost taxpayers by reducing the productiveness of two hubs of national ag research. Plain and simple, this is not a move in service of improved ag research capacity, rural stakeholders, or taxpayers writ large – rather, it is a bold-faced move to restrict and control the dissemination of information, one that in the end will weaken our farmers’ ability to compete at home and abroad.”