USDA Blog

Cross posted from the Let’s Move! blog: More than 1,200 students, teachers and Scouts recently planted 4,500 trees at the Monument Fire Center on the Pike National Forest in Celebration of the International Year of Forests and as part of an ongoing restoration project in the area. The event brought...

Local leaders are keeping the spirit of Earth Day alive and well in rural South Dakota. On Monday April 18, 2011, USDA, Rural Development Under Secretary Dallas Tonsager announced 51 water and waste disposal and two Community Facilities projects funded as part of Earth Day 2011. I had the privilege...

Much of my work as a sociologist at the Economic Research Service (ERS) involves research on the food security of U.S. households – their ability to consistently obtain adequate food. My colleagues and I were naturally concerned about how the economic downturn that began in late 2007 would affect...

Minor Morgan has promoted organic farming for decades. And since the early 1990s, Morgan, executive director of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Community Farm, has been working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop a farming process that is economically and environmentally...

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 the USDA's rich science and research portfolio. Proving that agriculture does indeed count, Director of the Statistics Division at USDA’s National Agricultural...

Last week, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan visited the campus of Michigan State University to participate in a tour of the cellulosic ethanol pretreatment lab at MBI International and conduct a roundtable discussion with key stakeholders in Michigan’s biofuels community. MBI is owned...

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...