USDA Blog

The USDA’s Food Safety Discovery Zone has finished its spring 2012 tour, taking hands-on food safety lessons across the Southeast. Stopping in the smallest towns and big cities like Dallas, we were able to educate over 175,000 people on preventing foodborne illness. Real food safety experts who work...

Are you an educator looking for a unique new way to motivate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants to eat healthfully and cook more at home? Or do you just love browsing, collecting, and arranging new recipes? Either way, you’re going to appreciate the latest feature added to...

Having two small active kids who are happily prone to drinking water and low-fat milk 99% of the time and who also love to eat nutritious foods (not quite like their mom), I was particularly excited to celebrate opening day of the USDA Farmers Market.

Hunger is an issue that touches the lives of people all around us. Whether it’s the single mother struggling to feed her family of four while simultaneously making ends meet or a person living in rural America who has to drive 50 miles to the closest grocery store, hunger affects us all. That is why...

The first few weeks of June are always some of the busiest weeks for USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Our agency reaches out to more than 100,000 farmers and ranchers across the country as we conduct three major surveys: June Area, Crops/Stocks and Hogs and Pigs Inventory...

Edward Avegalio fought for his country in Operation Desert Shield in the early 1990s. Today, he serves his country by providing locally grown, fresh produce to area schools, local restaurants and stores through the first hydroponic farm in American Samoa that was redesigned to allow him to actively...

National Fishing and Boating Week, a part of the June celebration of Great Outdoors Month, will be celebrated again this year June 2 - 10. It’s a time when fishing fanatics and amateur anglers will visit national forests and grasslands across the country to try their hands at landing the big one. On...

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. Fresh corn and homegrown tomatoes are as much a part of the traditional American scene as apple pie. Scientists with USDA’s...

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. Are you an organic grain farmer or thinking of becoming one? Or maybe you’re wondering about strategies for improving...

Like other farmers in the West, Roger Barton must irrigate the alfalfa hay he raises for horse owners. And like many farmers, Barton has to be creative to make ends meet. He has an off-farm job to support his family and is always trying to think of ways to keep his farm costs down. When diesel costs...