Leaders from Maryland have launched a campaign to stop a proposal that would close the 115-year-old Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) and move personnel to other states across the U.S.
On Monday, lawmakers, including U.S. Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks, Rep. Steny Hoyer, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Glen Ivey, Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy and other state leaders, gathered to highlight the importance of the facility and why it should stay in Maryland.
“It was not that long ago that we all gathered together with this simple message: BARC provides really important resources and research to the country and that it should stay right here in Prince George’s County, Maryland,” Van Hollen said, who took a tour of the facility located in Beltsville.
“After [speaking to employees] on the tour, the special nature of BARC came through to all of us,” Van Hollen said.
“There’s been a multi-billion dollar investment of American’s taxpayers dollars in this space,” said Ivey.
“If you just pick it up and move it, you’re squandering that money, and it’s expensive to move, and you’ll have to build a new facility wherever you go,” Ivey said. “And you’re going to lose the human capital to move out to wherever they’re trying to take them to. It just doesn’t make sense.”
In July, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins unveiled a major restructuring plan aimed at relocating Department of Agriculture employees out of the D.C. area, citing high housing costs and salaries as key factors. However, Rollins acknowledged that as many as half the affected staff may opt to leave the agency rather than move.
BARC spans 6,500 acres and has been a cornerstone of agricultural innovation in Maryland for over a century.
It is home to the George Washington Carver Center, which houses the headquarters of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, as well as several University of Maryland research initiatives. These include a premier turf grass research facility and long-term agricultural study fields.
BARC employs more than 1,000 federal workers and plays a vital role in supporting hundreds of jobs throughout the community.
“We’re going to fight this for the American people,” said Hoyer. “For the AG community, not only here, but around the country,” he said.
“Our global standing will be hurt even further,” said Alsobrooks. “We’re losing revenue. We’re losing our workforce. And this would mean much of the same.
“This is really the collective voice of each of us, standing up and saying now that BARC is so important, not only to the state of Maryland but to our country, and we are here to say that we absolutely cannot afford to close it.”
“You can’t just move soil,” Braveboy said, who notes it makes sense to keep the facility in Beltsville because of Maryland’s diverse climate. “And so the decades of research that has been conducted here means something.”
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