USDA Blog

USDA Rural Development Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein and the Rural Development Broadband Division Staff welcomed over 200 people to the National Broadband Workshop on April 20 – 21, 2011 in Downtown Denver. While rural communities face unique challenges in creating and...

Cross posted from the White House blog: As gasoline prices continue to rise across the country, USDA is working with farmers and entrepreneurs to secure our nation’s long-term energy future and give Americans more choices about where to spend their gas dollars: at home or abroad. For the past two...

Seeing the results of Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) programs up close is always an amazing experience as an FNS employee. In this case, I had that opportunity in Dallas recently at the Jubilee Park & Community Center. Founded in 1997, along with AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity and several faith...

Bristlecone pines are a small group of trees that reach an age believed by many scientists to be far greater than that of any other living organism known to man -- up to nearly 5,000 years.

A group of schoolchildren wait patiently in line to get their lunch. This ritual takes place in schools all over the world. But for the children in Mali, a country ranked 160 out of 169 of the poorest countries in the world, this may be their one nutritious meal for the day. With the number of...

This is the first in a series of three blogs affiliated with USDA’s Agribusiness Trade and Investment Mission, which was led by Acting Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Michael Scuse. This week, it’s been my privilege to lead an Agribusiness Trade and Investment Mission to...

A free curriculum available online can help educators teach students how to spot the invasive Asian longhorned beetle. Infestations of the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) have been initially reported by alert members of communities in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Massachusetts. As summer...

Last summer Arizona rural communities joined together to compete for a USDA Rural Development Technical Assistance grant to train communities of interest on regional economic development. The initiative, Stronger Economies Together or SET, was launched in 2009 by USDA Rural Development in...

The Asian Longhorned Beetle eradication staff in Worcester looks for pests up in the tree but also leaves presents under the tree. The Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) eradication program in Worcester, Mass., began when a resident from the Greendale neighborhood found a strange-looking insect in her...