Beekeepers, Farmers and the Fight to Save a Century-Old Research Hub

Industry groups and scientists have urged the Trump administration to reconsider its plan to close a renowned Agriculture Department center in Maryland and disperse its work around the country.

Nov. 27, 2025

Nestled across 6,500 acres in suburban Maryland sits the country’s largest and oldest agricultural research center, responsible for scientific breakthroughs that have touched on all aspects of American life. There, generations of government scientists bred the smaller, meatier turkey now ubiquitous at Thanksgiving tables, waged war on a fungus threatening global chocolate production and devised a method to measure artery-clogging trans fats.

In the next few years, however, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, or BARC, will shutter — its research operations dispersed across the country as part of a reorganization by the Agriculture Department.

Officials have characterized the plan as part of an effort to save taxpayer dollars and bring the agency closer to farmers and rural communities. Critics argue that the move will pose logistical challenges, disturb and perhaps imperil continuing research and most likely lead to the departures of scores of experienced scientists.

“It’s a huge gamble,” said Matthew Mulica, who runs the Honey Bee Health Coalition, a network of agriculture groups, beekeepers and scientists. “Could you even move the facility? Even if you could, moving BARC will put us back 10 years. We can ill afford that. It would be catastrophic for all kinds of agricultural products.”

The 115-year-old center is the most comprehensive agricultural research complex in the country and perhaps the world. Its 17 departments focus on the widest range of research among the 90 locations of the Agricultural Research Service, the Agriculture Department’s science agency. It employs hundreds of researchers and other personnel, including more than a third of “super grade” scientists — those with the highest rank of government employment, — within the agency. And it collaborates with a range of other government agencies like NASA, as well as with nearby universities.

Several scientific organizations have raised concerns about the practicality of relocating BARC’s vast collections, equipment and other research specimens — and the costs, in both dollars and scientific resources.

For example, BARC houses one million specimens of the National Fungus Collections and 49,000 slides of the Nematode Collection, or roundworms. While some samples are relatively easy to move, preserving the integrity of historical and rare samples is trickier.

BARC’s closure, which was announced in July, also incited strong opposition from a number of industry groups, farmers and lawmakers. Many argue that the work and research performed at the flagship complex cannot be replicated elsewhere.

The Agriculture Department did not respond to specific questions about the impending move, but said in a statement that the agency would have to spend $500 million to fully modernize the center.

“This is not a wise use of taxpayer dollars when there are other U.S.D.A. laboratories across the country with the capacity to house the research being conducted here,” the department said.

Since its opening in 1910, when it was known as the Government Farm, BARC has made a string of significant contributions to agricultural research. For its centennial celebration, the Agriculture Department cited dozens of breakthroughs achieved at the center in animal and plant science, disease research, and nutrition and food safety. By 1962, BARC spanned 10,500 acres and employed 4,800 scientists, which is more than twice the amount employed across the entire Agriculture Research Service today.

But over the decades, its size and work force have gradually diminished as the United States’ public investment in agriculture research has contracted. Its facilities are also in need of major repairs, a reason cited by the Trump administration for BARC’s closure.

A 2023 whistle-blower complaint accused leadership of failing to address unsafe workplace conditions, including mold and lack of running water — allegations that have largely been substantiated by watchdog investigations. In response, the Agriculture Department has invested $174 million in renovations, but it estimates that additional deferred maintenance would cost another $300 million.

That level of disrepair reflects decades of underinvestment in infrastructure for research, former officials said. “BARC felt that most acutely because it’s the oldest facility,” said Thomas Shanower, a former director of the Agriculture Research Service’s Northeast region, which includes BARC.

But, he added, “I don’t think just arbitrarily saying we’re going to move programs wholesale is the way to solve this problem.”

Trump administration officials disagree. Stephen A. Vaden, the deputy agriculture secretary, argued before Congress in July that closing poorly maintained Washington-area facilities, including BARC, and relocating staff to other parts of the country would save taxpayers billions of dollars.

Some of those savings would come from staff members who choose to resign, rather than relocate. During the first Trump administration, a 2019 relocation of two other Agriculture Department agencies — the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture — initially resulted in attrition rates of over 50 percent.

Mr. Vaden and other officials have emphasized that BARC’s closure and relocation will take place over the course of several years. It is unclear where the labs and research facilities will move or if some will simply be shuttered altogether. Officials have disclosed little to the public or BARC employees about the plan, according to five current and former workers there who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. That lack of transparency has many uneasy about what the future holds for their lives and their work.

Farmers have also been expressing their own concerns.

In a letter to the Agriculture Department, the Maryland Farm Bureau, a state chapter of the influential American Farm Bureau, urged for the preservation and modernization of BARC, arguing for the continuity of research.

The Western Growers Association, which represents produce farmers, noted in its own letter that BARC’s Environmental Microbial and Food Safety Laboratory was one of the only places in the country that supported research on food-borne pathogens. It would be unwise to relocate or recreate the lab’s customized equipment and facilities, as they had been built just three years earlier, the letter added.

Losing experienced scientists, too, would result in losing “decades of cumulative knowledge,” Jeana Cadby, the director of environment and climate for the association, said in an interview, adding that BARC was “the keystone for federal food safety research.”

Beekeepers in particular have rallied against the announced closure of the center and its bee lab, which offers a free diagnostic service revered by small-scale and hobbyist keepers and employs a team of scientists who investigate colony collapse and conduct other research.

When bees began dying en masse earlier this year, BARC researchers “sprung into action,” Mr. Mulica of the Honey Bee Health Coalition said. “Without that action, we would be completely in the dark about what happened and why they died and what to do about it. So when we say they are crucial, they are indispensable.”

While the Agricultural Research Service operates a handful of other bee labs across the country, beekeepers say that BARC’s location — in the mild climate of the Mid-Atlantic and far away from industrial agriculture, which could interfere with research on pesticides — is vital to bee-related research.

Others note that relocating BARC’s research materials would involve substantial challenges.

Missteps in moving more delicate or potentially dangerous samples (such as fungi that could cause diseases in plants or animals) could result in contamination. Mr. Shanower pointed to the decade-long and still incomplete relocation of animal pathogens from Plum Island, a former federal facility for animal disease research, to a new bio-secure location in Kansas as an example of the painstaking efforts involved in moving sensitive collections.

And some research cannot be moved at all. BARC is home to several plots of land used in long-term experiments, some dating back decades, on improving farm productivity and water usage.

Some members of Maryland’s congressional delegation have warned that the move is illegal, given language in past and current spending bills that prohibit the Agriculture Department from reorganizing or relocating without congressional approval.

Representative Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, whose district includes BARC, said in an interview that if the Agriculture Department tried to close the center without consulting Congress, his office would consider litigation to stop the move. In the 1980s, Mr. Hoyer successfully fended off similar efforts by the Reagan administration to sell off tracts of BARC land and save taxpayer dollars.

“It’s been coveted because it’s obviously valuable land,” Mr. Hoyer said. But beyond monetary value, he stressed “how important the Beltsville Agriculture Research Center is in this country.”

“They’ve done extraordinary work which has advantaged the farm community throughout the world,” he said.

Linda Qiu is a Times reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade.

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