BY RHIANNON EVANS
Capital News Service
This story is part of a series – A region reshaped: Federal layoffs in Maryland a year later.
BELTSVILLE – The closure of a federal agricultural research facility in Maryland could lead to a loss of scientific breakthroughs and hundreds of jobs, state lawmakers, officials and experts said.
“It’s such an important part of the rural economy,” said Charlotte Davis, executive director of the Rural Maryland Council. “We want to make sure that our Maryland farmers are thriving and getting the support they need to remain profitable.”
The shutdown of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, known as BARC, could disrupt Maryland’s largest commercial industry and add to the more than 31,000 federal jobs the state lost over the last year, state officials said.
The research center explores new farming practices and technologies and helps find solutions to climate and pest issues, said Wendy Powers, dean of the University of Maryland’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Powers said moving current experiments to other locations in places like Washington state and Florida could interfere with research results because of differences in climate, soil and water.
“Removing the research observations from this part of the country and placing it in other parts of the country makes it a little bit difficult to ensure that the findings are applicable,” Powers said.
Democrats in Maryland’s congressional delegation called the planned closure of the facility unlawful, pointing to a clause in the 2026 U.S. Department of Agriculture budget bill that requires approval from Congress to shutter the Beltsville facility.
“It is extremely troubling that, instead of working with Congress on a sensible plan to modernize BARC, the Department is pursuing an abrupt, politically-motivated, and short-sighted effort to shutter a facility of critical importance to U.S. agriculture and food security,” the lawmakers wrote in an April 27 letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.
Andy Harris, the state’s only Republican congressional member, did not sign the letter.
USDA aims to reduce workforce in the region
The USDA announced a reorganization plan in July 2025 that included closing some facilities in the nation’s capital region and reducing the area’s workforce from about 4,600 to no more than 2,000 employees. The USDA said it plans to vacate the Beltsville facility over the course of several years to avoid disrupting critical research.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the USDA cited the high maintenance costs and unsafe conditions of the 116-year-old facility for the closure. More than 60% of the buildings are not being used and a 2023 whistleblower complaint found that many buildings had mold, water damage and no running water, agency officials said.
“This move puts our research institutions outside of the beltway and closer to the land grant universities with talent pipelines who will lead the research and solve the problems facing the future of American agriculture,” Rollins said in an April 23 press release. “This is about strengthening our USDA research focus and improving the services the agricultural economy relies on.”
Sen. James Rosapepe, D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel, said the facility’s closure could also lead to even more federal job losses within the state, a hit he said his district can’t afford to take.
“It will be incredibly disruptive for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are my constituents, both who work at BARC and who live in the area,” said Rosapepe.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said the state could lose more than 1,000 jobs directly and indirectly because of the closure.
In a letter sent to Rollins last September, Brown said the facility is “an economic engine, with these jobs contributing a cumulative $450 million to annual GDP.”
Rosapepe said that when the Trump administration previously relocated USDA research agencies from the D.C. area to Kansas City, Missouri, a lot of experienced federal employees chose not to move.
“Maryland has lost more economically than any other state as a result of the Trump administration. That’s been federal workers, that’s federal contractors, that’s federal agencies like BARC,” Rosapepe said. “I think the attack on BARC is just part of a broader attack on Maryland.”
