You make a good point.

I'm skeptical though that 100% (or even more than 60%) of the workers in the DC offices are true specialists in agriculture vs. office workers who happen to do agricultural work. Certainly there's a set of institutional knowledge to be maintained. But the most committed specialists are going to be the ones who are willing to move to e.g. Ogden Utah, as the previous commenter mentioned. The slightly specialized office workers, being able to swap into some other role for ${BUREAUCRACY} are less likely to move and less likely to need to. There are people in Ogden and ${RURAL_CITY_[1-5]} who are able to do the support work needed.

However, as you say, the time scale is important and I did not really take that into account.