September 2019

Nestled in a small cutout of the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont is a town named Lincoln. The very epitome of a small town, Lincoln, is home to around 1,200 people, depending on the season. It’s far enough off the highway that during the winter months, there’s limited traffic coming into town.

North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ slogan “Got To Be NC!” is a promotional branding tool allowing consumers to better understand where their food or products are produced.

There are so many beautiful songs and poems written about autumn. And images! Amazing Fall Colors Flickr pictures and Forest Service YouTube videos of trees and flowers aglow with brilliant reds, yellows and oranges among the many iridescent shades of the color spectrum—see what I mean! Fall just brings out the poets in us.

José (Tato) Roig’s farm has been producing coffee since 1978 and has become one of the most successful farms in Puerto Rico’s Coffee Zone. However, Hurricane Maria inflicted severe damage on his crops, as well as those of many other coffee growers.

Strolling down the aisles of most toy departments, parents are likely to see more diverse options such as a brown-faced doll holding her microscope and African-American action figures in engineering sets. Many toy manufacturers have removed the stigma of “traditional gender roles” and created science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) toys with diverse physical features to encourage all children to see themselves in these roles. USDA strives to make these same improvements in the agriculture sector. It’s National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week and we’re celebrating the student support our science agencies provide every day to create a research workforce more reflective of our society.

Oregon farmers and ranchers produce more than 230 types of agriculture products every year. Many of Oregon’s top commodities are seasonal and holiday favorites. The 2017 Census of Agriculture data provide a key for enjoying these quality products in the coming months.

Having learned about recent fires in the Amazon rainforest at school, my first grader came home with a head full of ideas on how to protect what many call the lungs of the Earth—and all the animals that live there: a bake sale.

The digital divide between population centers and rural America is a fact of life. For some, it’s simply a lack of cell phone coverage; for others, it signals a lack of education for their children.

Andy and Valerie Cole are the husband and wife team who own Andy’s Agway in rural Dayton, Maine. It’s an impressive operation - in no small part because the Coles still run their agricultural business on the fundamental values their family began with over a century ago.

What’s the psychology behind food waste and what can we do to change our behavior? This interview features insights from Brian Roe, Professor and Faculty Lead at The Ohio State University’s Food Waste Collaborative and Laura Moreno, who received her Ph.D. studying food waste at the University of California, Berkeley.