Pioneering Morris ag research lab is down to three scientists

MORRIS, Minn. – At a soils research lab on the edge of this college town in western Minnesota resides a vision of agriculture’s future.

Pennycress, camelina — winter oilseed crops that someday soon could power commercial airlines and transform the waters of the Corn Belt — were first developed in earnest at the North Central Soils Lab.

But in the past year, the lab has gone from more than 20 employees to seven after Department of Government Efficiency cuts, hobbling research efforts.

Its ability to drive those crops that could be future economic engines for the heartland is now under threat. Only one other lab, in Iowa, does this type of crop research.

“Without this lab, [the development of oilseeds for fuel] would not exist,” said Mitch Hunter, co-director of the Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota. “This was a basic thing to serve farmers.”

Science that includes health care projects to environmental investigations has been cut in the past year. A review by the New York Times found competitive grants given by the National Institutes for Health and the National Science Foundation were 20% fewer than the average over the past decade.

Overall, more than 20,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture employees left in the first half of the year because of President Donald Trump’s deferred resignation program, according to a report obtained by Politico.

In Minnesota, besides the Morris lab, the federal cutbacks affected agricultural labs employing animal scientists working on avian influenza — devastating to Minnesota’s nation-leading turkey farms since 2022. They also hit the Cereal Disease Lab in St. Paul. Other science operations were cut, too, in the state, including a major freshwater Environmental Protection Agency research lab on Lake Superior.

Trump has said the federal government is too large, and the cuts will help it run more efficiently.

Farmers are key to the Trump administration’s base, and for the most part still support the president. However, in Morris, a western Minnesota town surrounded by cornfields and dairy barns, the cutbacks are hitting them hard.

The largely rural farm industry relies upon research for improving yields, protecting livestock and developing new markets.

While researchers will try their best, only three scientists remain at the Morris lab.

Bernards arrived in Minnesota in August 2023 and had been in his role for roughly 18 months by February 2025 when he was laid off as a probationary employee. By court order, he was rehired in March. In early April, after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the Trump administration to restart firings, Bernards took a role with an agrichemical business.

“The consequences of the last nine or 10 months we’ll be living with for the next nine to 10 years,” Bernards said.

Throughout 2025, the cuts to agriculture research and science have consistently put the administration on uneven footing with farm groups.

There’s growing concern the cuts could mean the U.S. is flat-footed in responding to animal disease outbreaks, in livestock or poultry.

“If we don’t fund research we won’t be able to be up for the challenges of the day,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee. “We also won’t be up for the opportunities.”

“As far as the cuts, I’m not aware of what exactly happened,” said Rep. Paul Anderson, a Republican who represents the Morris area. “A lot of it was probationary stuff.”

But he also added, “Any ag research is good.”

The budget passed by Congress to re-open the government in November included $1.79 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, ensuring the Morris lab is funded through next year. The House and Senate rejected cuts the White House sought.

The soil lab in Morris was established in the 1950s, when early technicians studying soil erosion turned a barren wheat field to a world-class research facility.

Over the decades, the small-but-mighty lab has been a juggernaut at not only researching water usage and weeds but also alternative crops that, proponents say, could clean the air and water. Uniquely, the lab was gifted a working farm, where research could be embedded with conditions farmers faced in the Upper Midwest.

Federal labs in far-flung regions are perennially at risk of budgetary cuts, but for years the Morris lab and its work had a protector in the Democratic chair of the Agriculture Committee, former Rep. Collin Peterson. After Peterson lost the 2020 election to Republican Michelle Fischbach, the small board of devoted supporters felt their annual trips to Washington, D.C., were more vital.

This year, the much smaller staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were friendly but could not make any commitments, Meichsner said.

“They took our information and smiled and said, ‘We don’t really know where we’re going,’” he said.

Into the future, the U’s Hunter said, the work at the lab will be limited, and that will be a loss for not only scientists, but ultimately, farmers.

The strangling of staffing at sites like the Morris one, essential to biofuels research, has alarmed industry, as well.

In May, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat, pressed USDA Deputy Undersecretary Scott Hutchins on whether the administration would stand by funding the ARS facilities in Minnesota, including in St. Paul and Morris.

“Some of those missions have continued to add a lot of value,” said Hutchins, speaking broadly about the 90-some ARS facilities across the nation. “Others have migrated to other areas of focus.”

Smith responded that she didn’t “hear quite what I’m looking for.”

In agricultural circles, there’s a larger concern that was looming long before the Trump administration came to the White House: the slow replacement of public science by private companies.

According to a 2019 report by a USDA economist, public R&D had flatlined since the 1970s at about $5 billion. Meanwhile, private funding had shot up since the early 2000s, hitting nearly $12 billion.

“This was an issue before DOGE,” said Carmen Fernholz, who has farmed organically in southwestern Minnesota since the 1970s. “What this does is it puts ag research in a bind.”

Bernards, the former director, said he chose to take less pay working in public science. He worries about the science career field. And he worries, as a weed scientist, about lagging knowledge for the nation.