Indianapolis will soon be home to one of five new regional hubs for USDA—and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says she’s “excited” for the move.
“We serve the farmers and the ag community. Why do we have thousands and thousands of people in Washington who’ve never stepped foot on a farm before?” said Secretary Rollins last week during her visit to Indianapolis.
When the Trump administration announced that it was looking to move many of USDA’s services and employees out of Washington, D.C., a group of Indiana ag leaders made a visit to Rollins’ office back in June to sell her on the idea of moving USDA to Indianapolis.
She said that meeting—and their sales pitch—definitely worked.
“I want to give a big ‘shout-out’ to [ISDA Director] Don Lamb, who was part of a contingency that came to talk to me a couple of months ago about this, and made an extremely compelling case about how important Indianapolis is, and a Mecca of research and industry and talent and intellect and farming that is here in this part of the country. So, it became a pretty easy decision for us, and we’re excited to get USDA to Indianapolis,” said Rollins.
Aside from the proximity to Purdue University and other major ag businesses, she said that Indianapolis made sense for USDA because of its central location to many of America’s grain and livestock producers. She also referenced her time at Everett Farms and Seed in Lebanon, north of Indianapolis. That’s where Tyler Everett, who also serves on the Indiana Corn Growers Association, had Rollins ride in a combine with him and let her take the wheel for a moment as the harvester was going through one of his corn fields.
“I was on a soybean and corn farm before I came here this morning, and I was harvesting. I was driving the combine, and that is what the vision is for USDA,” Rollins said. “How do we get out of Washington and get where we can better serve the American people? So, I couldn’t be more excited.”
Rollins added that she plans to make many more visits to Indianapolis once the new hub is in the works.
“I’ll be here a lot because of that,” she told Hoosier Ag Today.
Rollins said that further details on USDA’s move to Indianapolis will be coming “in the next thirty to sixty days.”
In addition to Indianapolis, the other four hub locations are Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah.
USDA says that Washington, D.C. will still serve as its national headquarters, but with only 2,000 of its current 4,600 employees working in our nation’s capital.
CLICK BELOW for Secretary Rollins’ comments on the new USDA hub in Indianapolis during her visit to Everett Farms and Seed in Boone County on Thursday, Oct. 30:
CLICK BELOW for Secretary Rollins’ comments on the new USDA hub in Indianapolis during her press conference held at the 98th National FFA Convention & Expo on Thursday, Oct. 30:
