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Last month, I sat down with Anna Wallingford, the founder of the nonprofit, New Hampshire Community Supported Research (NHCSR), and a former U.S. Department of Agriculture staffer, at a café on New Hampshire’s seacoast. Wallingford was among the nearly 6,000 USDA employees unlawfully fired by the Trump administration in February 2025. She has since moved back to her home state of New Hampshire to launch NHCSR, a community approach to agriculture research and education in New Hampshire.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Daily Yonder: I want to start by giving you a chance to tell us how you got to where you’re at now.
Anna Wallingford: I do want to take a step back to maybe the past three or four years. I was a postdoc at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, which is like a professional research service. If you think about most agricultural research that happens in the country, it’s usually done at universities where you have capacity and grant-funded research, where you’re training graduate students to learn how to do this at the same time that you’re completing research. USDA’s Agricultural Research Service [ARS] is a funded lab. As a researcher in ARS, you have your own lab, you have your own staff. They are ready to go to do certain things, and we get our marching orders from our program leaders.
My research group worked with invasive pests, invasive insects. If a new invasive insect showed up, we were ready to describe the genetics, describe the behavior, develop monitoring tools – we were really ready to assist farmers when they had a new problem, but we also had this steady drum beat of all the other things that we were developing. Some of that was monitoring tools for pest insects so farmers can make better decisions when they’re using chemicals. Part of that was developing new microbial bio pesticides – pathogens that kill insects that can be used as a pesticide.
So I was working as a postdoc with ARS, before an opportunity in New Hampshire opened up. I’m from New Hampshire, and so I was excited to go back. And it was a big shift. It wasn’t full of research, it was an extension position.
DY: How was it different?
AW: I got here and I realized, especially in the northeast, in the New England states, we don’t have a lot of big agricultural commodities. Maine has blueberries and potatoes, and they are serious, and they do an amazing job. I think the state of Maine does a really good job of supporting those commodities. But other than that, it’s not the same as other parts of the country. So there’s not a lot of people who do the kind of research that I do. The more I talked to farmers in this area, I was like, oh, I need to be doing more research here. So I asked the University of New Hampshire if I could leave my job in extension. I want to make a new job for myself, paying my own way. It’s not unusual in the academic field. This happens a lot. So I jokingly ate what I killed, you know, like whatever I could get funded I would do. I had ample access to really bright students who were happy to get an opportunity to work on insects. It was a good opportunity, and I was very happy.
But then a permanent position opened up in the ARS lab I was at as a postdoc. So I went to UNH saying, I love what I’m doing, thank you for having me. But not only is the USDA offering me a steady salary, they were going to build me a new lab at Beltsville.
DY: Beltsville, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C.?
AW: Yes. The research station in Beltsville is the biggest agricultural research facility in the country, and now it’s the one they’re talking about closing. But at the time, in the spring of 2024, nobody thought they were gonna get fired in the middle of the night.
So I went, and it was just over a year ago, in February 2025, that I got fired in the middle of the night.
DY: What were the series of events leading up to that?
AW: Well, when Beltsville first started in 1910, it was going to do everything. But fast forward 100 years, and all of a sudden, we’re in the capital region, and we are definitely on the chopping block, as far as the Trump administration targeting federal employees in the capital region.
After I was fired, the USDA announced a reorganization plan that involves closing Beltsville. All of those employees are going to be sent to five hubs around the country. This represents 800 employees. This represents 19 lab groups. Beltsville was really 19 labs in one spot, and on the USDA’s list, it was just one bullet point. I was fired in February, and it was like, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
I was a probationary employee. My position actually was a three year probationary period, so I was less than one year in. There were at least 100 impacted by that cut, out of maybe 800 or 900 employees. It was very significant. Especially since we were all the newest hires. I was working on our next five year plan, because I was gonna take over from the guy who was retiring.
DY: After you got fired, what did you do next?
AW: I decided to move back home. I was like, I’ll just lick my wounds and figure out what’s next. A few weeks later, I was back in New Hampshire, submitting resumes, and I got another middle of the night email on Friday saying, report back to your duty station by Monday.
So I reported back to my duty station by the end of March, and then they offered us deferred resignation in April 2025. But when I came back, I couldn’t really do anything. I was just sitting there reading papers and writing papers. And every day, they were saying, don’t talk to the press. Whatever you do, don’t talk to the press. But they weren’t telling us anything. So what would we talk to the press about?
DY: At that point, had the plan been made clear that Beltsville was going to be closed?
AW: It had not been made clear, but that was what they were talking about, because there was such a push to move federal employees out of the D.C. area. Our leadership all the way up to the secretary’s office had no idea what was going on. You could tell they were really beside themselves. Because these people, they’re close to power, they’re used to knowing what’s going on and being able to make decisions. I think Secretary Brooke Rollins’ office was getting zero input from people who knew how to run things.
DY: These leaders that you’re talking about, they’re career USDA, not political appointees, right?
AW: Yeah, and I don’t think that they were even part of the conversation. That was the sense that I got, because we were having regular meetings, Zoom meetings, with leadership. And they were like, we don’t know.
It was very unusual. I had worked for ARS through the first Trump administration and we got a lot more information then. I think maybe that was what shocked the USDA leadership so much, is that they thought, you know, power through. We’ll get through this. We know how to jump through hoops. We know how to do paperwork. But, I mean, nothing comes close to it now. In order to get permission to do anything, to buy anything, it’s like four layers of paperwork. You can’t talk to the public. You can’t go to meetings. The public pays our salary to do things for the public, but we are not allowed to talk to the public. So you can see where I cut and ran.
DY: So after you reported back, you did ultimately decide to leave?
AW: Yes, I decided to leave. I decided to leave because I kind of knew what was going to happen or what might be happening. If they shut down the Beltsville research facility and restructured my lab group, they could say we want to keep you, but you need to move.
And I’d had the idea for Community Supported Research while I was back home in New Hampshire in March 2025 and trying to figure out what was next.
DY: Which brings us to NHCSR, the nonprofit you’re building now. Tell me a little bit about that work.
AW: There are three aspects that I’m working on as far as outputs. One is the actual research on the farm, which is field-based and trial-based. It’s the low hanging fruit. It’s not sexy, but it’s really critical because it’s the kind of stuff farmers actually use. Another part is YouTube content, which is similar to extension work. It’s saying, here’s how you grow stuff, here’s how our food system works. Third is that I have a podcast called Serious Grower, which I’m saying is for growers and eaters. That’s more for a general audience. I have several co-hosts who are different types of growers. They’re serious about food in their own way. There’s a non-commercial farmer who’s a homesteader, growing their own food and living off their own land. There’s someone who’s interested in edible landscapes, so people who want to add food into their landscape instead of just bushes.
So the question is, can I create a community that generates research ideas that are unique? How can science help homesteaders and community gardeners? That’s why I think the podcast is really important, because it’s not us in the scientific community saying, “Here’s the data, here’s the solution for you.” It’s like, “This is what we know. How does that fit into your philosophy?”
I’m really excited about the areas where you have both hardcore scientists and more unconventional, ‘woo-woo’ growers. What do they agree on? That’s where I think the podcast is going. The podcast is more about answering what does it all mean, the YouTube channel is teaching people how to grow, kind of like an extension service, and then the research is the stuff that I love the most. I’m hoping it all feeds back into each other. It’s called CSR because of the whole idea of community supported agriculture. It’s like a CSA, but for research.
DY: What are your hopes for NHCSR? What does success look like to you?
AW: I want a lot of engagement. More than anything, I want people responding to my questions. A lot of the YouTube videos I’m making now, some of them are informative, like, this is how you grow stuff. But a lot of it is like, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing this thing, what do you think?” As soon as I get people going, “Yeah do that,” or “No, that’s stupid,” I know I’ve got somebody engaged. Another thing I’m hoping to do with the podcast, where I’ve set up a Patreon, is do small-group coaching sessions. I’ve been talking to a few moms who are interested in gardening, and they want to do more stuff at home, but they don’t know where to start. So that’s where coaching makes sense. It’d be like, here’s how you can fertilize your plants. Let’s talk in a month and see what happens. If I get enough people interested in the Patreon, that would be the thing I offer to members, because right now, nothing’s behind a paywall, and so I’m thinking it might make more sense to have something like that in an exclusive group, so they feel safer talking and asking “stupid” questions. I have a couple other plans for year two and year three, but right now, that’s my goal.
DY: Thanks, Anna. Find NHCSR and the Serious Grower podcast at nhcsr.org.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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The post Q&A: Bringing Agriculture Research and Education to New Hampshire appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
