Indiana ag leaders are celebrating the news following the announcement last Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that the city of Indianapolis has been selected by the agency to be one of their five new regional hub locations.
“I can’t really think of this as anything but a ‘win-win’ for Indiana,” says Don Lamb, Director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA).
The move is part of a reorganization of the agency to bring USDA closer to its customers and eliminate management layers and bureaucracy.
“I’m just really proud of Indiana and I’m proud that we were chosen as one of the spots,” Lamb tells Hoosier Ag Today. “I think it’s just a testament to what I always call ‘Team Ag Indiana’. When I think about Indiana’s commodity groups and the different folks that really help with agriculture, along with our farmers, it just shows that we have a strong presence across the country in agriculture.”
Lamb was part of a team of Indiana ag leaders who met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in her office in Washington, D.C. last month to make that winning pitch on why Indiana and the city of Indianapolis would make an outstanding home for USDA.
“We heard that rumor that USDA was moving out some folks across the country. Why wouldn’t we want to be part of that?” said Lamb. “We formed a group that that started just thinking about that. If that’s going to happen, let’s make a pitch for Indiana. Now, we look back on that and think it was worth it because, at the time, we didn’t know if it was worth this effort or not, and now we look back on it and say we’re glad we did that.”
Even though USDA hasn’t yet said where the new hub will be located in Indianapolis or which offices and staff positions will be moving to the Circle City, Lamb tells Hoosier Ag Today that the move will greatly benefit Indiana’s farmers and ag industry.
“It will be an advantage to have USDA here,” says Lamb. “It will just make it more efficient for communication. We’re also going to have the opportunity to be really be on the cutting edge of some things that we might be able to do because of that connection locally. It’s just going to provide a lot of opportunities for us.”
USDA says the other four region hub locations will be in Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, North Carolina; and Fort Collins, Colorado.
USDA says that Washington, D.C. will still serve as a headquarters, but with only 2,000 of its current 4,600 employees working in our nation’s capital.
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