USDA Blog

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: It is an honor to be named a Champion of Change by the White House for my work with school nutrition programs in the Pacific Northwest. Last Friday I joined a roundtable meeting with Administration officials and five other chefs from around the nation to...

Every year across the country, the U.S. Forest Service plants trees on thousands of acres of land. These efforts help to restore valuable ecosystems and helping to combat the effects of climate change. “Planting trees is a win-win investment,” said Dave Cleaves, Climate Change Advisor for the Forest...

A few scattered showers didn’t dampen spirits at a Maryland Earth Day event to highlight the completion of the improved Worton Wastewater Treatment Plant, Tuesday April 19.

At Monty Collins' cattle operation near Pleasantville, a rotational grazing system helps protect soil and water quality. A few miles away near Prairie City, Gordon Wassenaar has used no-till farming and a precision sprayer for years to minimize pesticide use and runoff from his soybean fields. We...

The Bisbee, Arizona Fire Station #81 was brimming with “officials”—the mayor, city council members, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ staff representative, and the acting state director for USDA Rural Development---but the attention was all on the rest of the crowd. Most of the residents of Tin Town...

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...