USDA Blog

Cross posted from the Let's Move! Blog: I recently visited the Willie Mays Boys and Girls Club to find out from the children what participating in USDA's Summer Food Service Program means to them. Year-round, afternoons at the Club means the children get to cook a healthy bean and kale soup, with...

In today’s market, consumers have high expectations for the products they purchase. Beyond performance and pricing, consumers like the opportunity to make educated purchasing decisions for their families, and increasingly, decisions that that have an impact. USDA’s new biobased product label will...

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) awarded the University of Vermont (UVM) a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) in late 2010 that will help producers improve and reclaim marginal pasture and increase profits. For many of Vermont’s beginning and experienced livestock farmers...

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service employees recently brought some holiday cheer to an unlikely group—basket weavers from the Rwanda Basket Company. The Rwanda Basket Company provides training and tools to basket weavers in Rwanda. The Company helps to open overseas markets for the...

About this time last year, the city of Washington, DC was digging out from a record amount of snow. My colleagues at USDA’s Economic Research Service were communicating electronically to get a new web-based mapping tool – the Food Environment Atlas – up and running. This online tool, which measures...

Cross-posted from the Let's Move! blog: Earlier this fall, in conjunction with International Chefs Day, Chef Melinda Burrows had the opportunity to team with Fremont Elementary School in Alhambra, California, to help launch their Chefs Move to Schools program. They did so in grand style. With three...

Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe the way I felt on the first day of my internship with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. There was so much to learn—program acronyms, database information, how to do a field check…But I was told by my co-workers that I would learn fast. And two...

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. 1935: It was the year when baseball legend Babe Ruth hung up his spikes, and New Deal programs like the Works Progress...

Recent estimates indicate only nine percent of family farm income comes from farming and fewer than half of our nation’s farmers and ranchers list farming as their primary occupation.

Julia Reyna was in need of assistance to repair her roof, replace the front and back doors, and replace falling sheetrock. She manages her bills with monthly income from Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and SNAP (food assistance) however this did not provide her with enough income to...