USDA Blog

One of Mississippi’s largest USDA Rural Development awards was recently celebrated in Lowndes County, where local leaders expect the improvements made by this award to lead to hundreds of jobs. USDA Rural Development State Director Trina George was joined by U.S. Senator Roger Wicker and numerous...

Nolan Ryan is one of the greatest icons in Major League Baseball history – a first-ballot Hall of Fame member and team president of the Texas Rangers. But Ryan is special in another way: he heads the Nolan Ryan Guaranteed Tender Beef Program, one of just a few marketing programs verified by USDA’s...

Just because a producer works at a smaller operation doesn’t mean he or she can’t sell on a bigger scale. And the size of a farm shouldn’t limit a producer’s ability to feed local foods to local people. But how can such an operation connect the dots to successfully market its products? One answer...

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. Nonnative plants have hitchhiked their way into flower beds, gardens, and yards of landowners in the South for decades...

Bacteria exist everywhere in our environment, and some of them can make us really sick. Illness-causing bacteria exist in or on food, on countertops, kitchen utensils, hands, pets, and in the dirt where food grows. As part of the Food Safe Families campaign, this week’s Check Your Steps blog focuses...

It isn’t every day that a student from Sabetha, Kansas gets a chance to meet an international diplomat, but last Wednesday wasn’t just any other day. That’s when students representing Grains for Hope, a non-profit organization committed to providing populations in need with fortified grain product...

Hello, I’m Dr. Jose Lozada. I joined the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in 2005 as a field veterinarian in Puerto Rico and, after a year and a half with the agency, I took my current position with the Veterinary Regulatory Support. My job here is providing risk advice to our...

The original slogan of the trekking group GreenXC read: Share a Ride, Tell a Story, Save a Park. Now they added and a National Forest (as in the U.S. Forest Service). This is because these young folks (all under 30), embarking on this bold transnational ride-share journey that departs July 27 th...

For 25 years, the conservationists at the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources’ (BWSR) have been cleaning the state’s water, improving soil productivity and restoring wildlife habitat on private lands. And for much of that time, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has been a partner...

Producers of organically-grown poultry and eggs will now find it easier to access market information about their segment of the organic industry with the release of a new user-friendly Market News report launched this week by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). The weekly report offers a...