71% of their budget goes to stuff like the food stamp program, interacting with tens of thousands of schools and state/local governments and whatnot.

The talent pool for bureaucrats (and researchers, and statisticians, etc.) is fundamentally more important.

(And let's not pretend there's no agriculture on the East Coast.)

Forget the point, you don't even have a leg to stand on.

I'm not saying it's not the best. I'm hedging against people like you making low effort comments that contribute nothing to the discussion like that by saying it might not be the best but it's better than DC

The USDA move was so bad that they lost a significant number of employees and were still working with significantly less experience years later. This is outrageously expensive and disruptive to any company or agency.

Not to mention the fact that about 5 years later the administration is making massive additional cuts to the agency after relocating and rehiring for it. It's just churn for nothing.