PEORIA, Ill. — USDA facility closures resulting from President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget, announced in late May, could mean the loss of the nation’s largest USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) crop use research center.

 

Approximately 200 USDA scientists and researchers would be laid off if the USDA-ARS National Center for Agricultural Utilization and Research (NCAUR) in Peoria is forced to close, according to an official with the Peoria “Ag Lab.” Fallout  from the announcement was swiftonce word reached Peoria and the district’s Congressional representatives.

“I don’t feel good about it, and neither do any of our state and local officials,” Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis told media May 30, just before touring the Ag Lab along with U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood and Cheri Bustos, Adam Nielsen, legislative director for the Illinois Farm Bureau, Sean X. Liu, NCAUR research leader, and others.

“We are all unified. We are definitely going to send a message back to Washington, D.C., that this would not be a smart move.”

Bustos, a Democrat, and LaHood, a Republican, both Illinoisans, expressed their support for continued funding for the Peoria Ag Lab while learning about the center’s many historic innovations.

These include the refinement and mass development of penicillin during World  War II, inventions of industrial and foodproducts from raw agricultural commodities, new technologies to improve environmental quality and many others.

In recent years, NCAUR scientists have worked to develop and commercialize new energy crops such as pennycress, and crop-based lubricants like the soybean oil used in elevators inside the Empire State Building in New York, among other scientific projects using crops.

The largest of USDA’s four research labs, first established in the 1930s, NCAUR is known as one of the premier agricultural utilization laboratories in the world. With future population growth requiring increased agricultural production and climate change adding additional pressure on renewable resources, the core mission of ARS and NCAUR is ultimately needed to meet society’s food, feed and consumer product demands, NCAUR officials say.

About 40 research products would grind to a halt if Trump’s budget proposal – which calls for a 21 percent cut, orabout $30 million, to USDA – remains intact and is approved by Congress, the representatives learned.

“It would be devastating, a killer to the family farmer and to our ag economy,” Bustos told Peoria’s WEEK-25 TV immediately following the NCAUR tour. 

 

“I’m going to work as hard as I can in the House to make sure that we keep the Ag Lab open, to make sure we have the appropriate dollars here, because it affects people every single day whether you are a farmer or whether you are buying food at the grocery store,” LaHood added.

Kim Kidwell, dean of the College of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACES) for the University of Illinois-Urbana, said the closure of the Ag Lab would be an “incredible waste, not only of the resources that established (NCAUR), but also to the future discoveries that actually could change the world.

“And I mean that, because discoveries that have happened there have changed the world. I don’t think there is a better example than penicillin.”

USDA-ARS spokesperson Christopher Bentley responded to a Farm World inquiry into the potential closure of the Peoria ARS facility and the May 30 visit to NCAUR, saying he “was told the tour went very well, and (Bustos and LaHood) were very impressed by what they saw at NCAUR.”

He also relayed an official USDA statement regarding the Trump budget proposal’s effect on USDA staff and operations: “The President has proposed his budget, and now the appropriators in Congress will make their mark on it. We cannot know what form the final budget will take, and so it is premature to comment on the specific impacts it may have on any USDA program.

“Secretary (Sonny) Perdue has communicated to all USDA staff that there is no sense in sugar-coating the budget, but he will be as transparent as possible throughout the budget process.”