USDA Blog

At your next picnic, let the spotlight shine on your food — not on party crashers like Salmonella or Listeria. When temperatures rise and food safety steps aren’t followed, cold dishes at a cookout are at risk for unsafe bacteria levels. Avoid foodborne illness by following these steps:

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides nutrition support to millions of American families in need. USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) works with partner states to ensure that SNAP provides the right amount of benefits to eligible families in the prescribed timeframes.

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we hear from USDA’s own Katina Hanson, Chief of Staff to the Associate Administrator for Policy and Programs at the Farm Service Agency (FSA). In...

On October 22, the newest celebrity chefs of Alexandria, La. gathered at the Inglewood Farm’s Harvest Barn Market to celebrate National Farm to School Month. Their purpose: emerge victorious from the Farm to School Iron Chef Competition. This competition challenged contestants to create a dish using...

In the United States, farming and technology go hand-in-hand in production agriculture. Technology helps improve productivity, efficiency and safety. Now, we’re discovering new ways that technology and digital strategies can offer similar benefits when marketing U.S. farm and food products overseas...

What do the military’s logistical network, peaches and peppers, and school children have in common? The first delivers the second to the third through a unique partnership between the Department of Defense (DoD) and USDA. October is National Farm to School Month and the perfect time to celebrate the...

This is a special year for rural electric cooperative utilities. Eighty years ago, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. The REA brought electricity to rural America, ultimately making the United States the source of the world’s food, fuel and fiber...

Now that summer has come and gone, I’m happy to announce that this season the USDA Rural Housing Service was able to partner with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) to feed more kids than ever before. Three hundred and five Rural Housing Service Multi-Family Housing properties participated in...

When most people think of bats, images of dark caves, vampires and Halloween come to mind. But actually, bats get a bad rap, and we often don’t know how important they are for controlling insects, pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and improving biodiversity. Many of our nation’s bats are facing...

This year, our MyPlate, MyWins video series has introduced you to families sharing their solutions for incorporating healthy eating into their unique lifestyles. In the final family video, Carol and Brad share how they plan meals around foods they either produce themselves in their family garden or...