The widespread discharge According to the former and current employees of the agency, the Ministry of Agricultural Scientists has carried out important research results on the disorder. Scientists who were met by the layoffs worked on projects to improve the plants, defend themselves against pests and diseases and to understand the climate effects of agricultural practices. The layoffs also threaten to undermine billions of taxpayers who were paid to farmers to support the nature conservation practices, warn experts.
The USDA branches are part of the mass procurement of the Trump government of federal employees who mainly aim to people who are in their trial period before they receive full-time status that can be up to three years for USDA scientists. The agency has not published any precise firing numbers, but it is estimated that they entertain many hundred employees in critical scientific and involve a reported participant, and a reported 3,400 employees in the forest service.
The employees were communicated by their dismissal in a blanket e -mail, which was sent on February 13th and seen by WIRED. “Based on its performance, the agency is not proven that its further employment in the agency is in the public interest,” says the e -mail.
A released employee described the weeks before shooting as “chaos” when the USDA stated (in response Orders of The Trump administration) and then unhindered (in response to a court decision), which are connected to the inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – the Landmark 2022, which was adopted under President Joe Biden, which has large amounts to federal money for climate policy. “It was just a break, unreaked, pause, unreaked. After four or five working days, I think I can literally do nothing, ”says the former employee who worked and asked for IRA-bound projects to stay anonymous to protect them from retaliation.
The IRA made 300 million US dollars available to the USDA to support the quantification of carbon binding and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. This money should support the subsidies of 8.45 billion US dollars for farmers approved in the IRA, Practices with potential environmental advantagessuch as cover and better waste storage. At least one contractual agricultural project financed by EQIP was carried out by the Trump administration. Reuters reports.
The $ 300 million should be used to set up an agricultural greenhouse gas network that could monitor the effectiveness of the types of nature conservation practices financed by EQIP and other billions of dollar conservation programs, says Emily Bass, Associate Director of Federal Policy, Food and Food, etc. Agriculture in the environmental research center Das Breakthrough Institute. This work was carried out partly by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), two of the scientific surfaces that were strongly struck by the federal discharge.
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“This is a lot of taxpayers’ dollars, and the quantification work of ARS and NRCs are an essential part of measuring the actual effects of these programs on emission reductions,” says Bass. “Stopping or sinking the efforts is an enormous waste of resources that have already been issued.”
A current ARS scientist who had spoken anonymously with cable because they were not justified to speak to the press claims that almost 40 percent of scientists together with several support employees were released. Many of the projects in their unit are now not in the disorder, such as the scientist, including works that have been planned in five -year cycles and require close monitoring of system samples. “In the short term we can keep this material alive, but we cannot necessarily do this indefinitely if we don’t have anyone in this project.”
