For more than a century, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center -- called BARC -- has generated scientific discoveries that improved farmers’ productivity, food safety and human nutrition. That would end under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plan to close BARC and to downsize USDA’s Washington-area staff, sending more than half its 4,600 employees from the D.C. region to four other states -- or laying some of them off. BARC sits on 6,500 acres in the same area of northern Princes Georges County as NASA and the Patuxent Research Refuge. Joanne Wilson, who lives in Laurel, worked as a support scientist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center for 33 years. We ask her about it.
Maryland Farm and Harvest video tour of BARC, Secretary Rollins Announces USDA Reorganization, Restoring the Department’s Core Mission of Supporting American Agriculture.
