McFarmer - 11/25/2025 17:53

I don’t want to put out specific information that would identify individual persons, it isn’t a big research area.

However, hiring freeze meant no summer help on USDA prairie research. This meant a reduction in research projects for the summer season.

The RIF meant probationary employees were dismissed, data collection on ongoing projects was reduced, making those projects basically worthless. Some of those projects were multi year projects.

No summer grounds keeping help meant researchers were doing that work instead of research work.

Some long term burn research projects suspended due to inability to hire temporary help.

Animal nutrition and genetic research trimmed due to lack of help sorting, weighing etc.

These problems were common across all the western animal research stations, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and others.

USDA agricultural researchers are dedicated bunch, they love their work.

RTO office meant many of those could not work after hours from home, which I personally know some who would do their number crunching on weekends so they wouldn’t be interrupted. They couldn’t even take their laptops home to reply to emails or write reports.

Getting time on USDA super computers was restricted to office hours, in the past they would reserve time in the off hours because of greater availability.

Output in general has been greatly reduced.

Efficiency my ass.