August 2010

Hardy Telecommunications, Inc., a nonprofit rural telephone cooperative, was recently awarded a $9,494,483 loan and a $22,153,791 grant through USDA Rural Development’s Telecommunications program.  This funding was made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).

Several Rural Development funded project sites in were visited by officials from Washington, D.C. in Texas recently to highlighted USDA’s commitment to strengthening rural communities.  

Cross-posted from the White House Blog

I’ve spent the last few days here in Iowa, a state that I was honored to serve as Governor for eight years. Yesterday, I walked the grounds of the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. The fair is refreshingly the same each year, but also a snapshot of changing rural America. The food stands, midway and cattle barns are in the same place that they’ve been for years. We’ve sculpted a "Butter Cow" since the early 1900s, but now the young people all have iPods and Blackberry phones. Their parents have cell phones.

Last week I completed three weeks working at the Deepwater Horizon Unified Area Command (UAC) in New Orleans. The UAC is a command center made up of Coast Guard, BP, Federal and State employees working together to address the environmental-, public health- and wildlife-related concerns associated with the massive Deepwater clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico. At the UAC, hundreds of staff members work nearly 12 hours each day, seven days a week.

Originally published in The Detroit News:

Today, 306 million Americans have food on their table thanks to a small and noble group of professional gamblers: America’s farmers and ranchers.

Only about 1 percent of Americans operate a farm or ranch and these hardworking few not only help provide the rest of us with three meals every day, but they also form the foundation of the agricultural sector of our economy that generates one in every 12 jobs and a $20 billion trade surplus.

They do so in the face of enormous business and personal risk.

Earlier this month, USDA Rural Development Area Director Lyndon Nichols, Helen Rush-Lloyd, Constituent Services Director from U.S. Rep. John F. Tierney’s office, and I delivered 80lbs of donations to a local Gloucester, Mass. food pantry named "The Open Door." This food pantry has a slogan "Feeding People. Changing Lives."

“Today the conversations I have with my business colleagues, family and friends are focused around the best ways to rebuilding the U.S. economy,” said Jerry Lorenzen, President of World Food Processing, in his opening remarks at a public event at his company’s headquarters in Oskaloosa, Iowa, last week.

The Warwick USDA Service Center is 100 pound closer to their goal of donating 250 pounds of food to local food banks this summer thanks to a generous donation by Holly Pashnik of Cumberland, RI.  In celebration of her ninth birthday, Holly asked her guests to bring non-perishable food items to help hungry families instead of gifts to her party.  This week, Holly and her brother Ryan delivered 100 pounds of food to the USDA Service Center as part of the Feds, Farmers, and Friends Feed Families Program.  “I wanted

A trip to your local plant nursery or florist is a lot like taking a trip around the world. You can find anything from boxwood from England, to roses from Colombia, to tulip bulbs from the Netherlands—the list goes on and on!  

Just as a myriad of plants, seeds and cut flowers come to us from around the world, so can plant pests and diseases. Non-native pests and diseases can hitchhike into the United States on shipments of plants and escape into the natural environment.  If these pests are introduced here, they can devastate home gardens and landscapes, nurseries, farms, and natural areas.

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. 

In 2004, as a junior at Montana State University (MSU), Ashley Williams knew she wanted to use her geography degree to make a difference internationally. She had no idea that agriculture would ever play a role in making that dream come true.

But that’s what happened when Williams found herself in a small farming village of 1,000 people in Sanambele, Mali, after a chance encounter with MSU entomology professor Florence Dunkel.