NRCS

Imagine an open field of vegetables and greens, exposed to the sun and the wind on the outskirts of your town. Now imagine a row of trees sheltering the crops from hot dry winds and producing more marketable melons than in open fields; more snap beans earlier and later in the season when prices are...

Jim Joens remembers planting crops on the Minnesota farm where he grew up as early as 1973, when he was 14 years old. Even then he knew that farming was what he wanted to be doing, and he’s been doing it ever since.

Prop Canyon Dam was built in 1960 in the village of Bluewater, New Mexico by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the Lava Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) and the Bluewater Toltec Irrigation District. The earthen structure was erected to protect crops, residents and...

Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan visited Rhode Island last Friday to celebrate the preservation of Ferolbink Farm, one of the State’s most iconic coastal farms. The event highlighted the success of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, which...

This story has three parts. Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. For an hour or so, that’s how it went: on one side of the roof, I smoked the bees and removed capped frames, volunteers ran the capped frames over to the extractor on the other side of the roof, and the extractor team spun the honey out...

This story has three parts. Read Part 1 here. Stay tuned for Part 3 later. The hive is basically a stack of wooden boxes. Within each box a series of frames rest vertically. Each frame is about an inch thick and has built-in cells. The cells are where the bees place the nectar they’ve taken from...

This story has three parts. Please look for the next two parts over the next two days. July 15 was one of the most exciting days I’ve experienced in my short time as co-beekeeper for the USDA People’s Garden. It was hot, humid, and hazy that morning, when I—together with seven partners and...

USDA Rural Development, Farm Service Agency, and Natural Resource Conservation Service in Nebraska held the “Feds, Farmers, and Friends Feed Families” food drive through July 30, from which 8,352 pounds of food were collected.

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. What are U.S. farms like? Are they largely family businesses, or corporate operations? Describing farms is challenging...

Islands often have to import many basic necessities and Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, is no exception. That’s why the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Kagman Watershed Project is so important to the island.