Conservation

Volunteers are helping to turn an old industrial area of Muncie, Indiana into a wetland where wildlife thrive and people can connect with the outdoors. Since the John M. Craddock Wetland Nature Preserve Team started its work on the site in 2009, wildlife has moved in, plants are flourishing and...

Rural communities will play a critical role in the nation's economic recovery, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in Omaha, Nebraska on January 28, 2011. Vilsack pointed out that producers learned well about the dangers of debt during the 1980s’ farm crisis and took heed, which has placed them...

It’s not every day that a civil servant gets to feel like a rock star. But at the 2011 National Pheasant Fest in Omaha, Nebraska this past weekend, employees of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) were a bit like celebrities to thousands of hunters and...

Speaking to a packed house at Pheasant Fest in Omaha last week, Farm Service Administrator Jonathan Coppess praised the accomplishments of a lengthy and highly successful partnership between Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Pheasants Forever organization — a partnership that revolves around the...

As many as 28 students from the Pajaro Valley High School recently planted wetland trees, shrubs and grasses as part of a Pajaro River Watershed project near Watsonville, California. For this project, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is working with the Resource Conservation District of...

This is part 3 of a three-part series. You can read Part 1 here, and part 2 here. My first order with the windmill pump manufacturing company was for four windmills. The first windmill would be constructed at Kandahar Airfield as a demonstration project for military commanders and Afghan officials...

This is part 2 of a three-part series. Read Part 1 here. Stay tuned for Part 3 later in the week. To try to make contact with the pump manufacturer in Pakistan, I went back to Sandy, who suggested that I e-mail my questions to him. He would print my e-mail and fax it to the man in Pakistan, who...

I can’t think of anyone more deserving of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) and North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) Farmer Rancher Pollinator Conservation Award than Paul Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol, California. That’s why I was so excited...

This story has three parts. Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 later in the week. When I arrived in Afghanistan as a USDA Agriculture Advisor in 2005, I was overwhelmed with what I found: an arid climate, agriculture being practiced in much the same way that it had been for thousands of years and...

Last week I went to a North American Pollinator Partnership (NAPPC) symposium at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s South Building, just off the National Mall. NAPPC is celebrating 10 years of existence, and the symposium made up day one of NAPPC’s three-day, annual conference, the focus of which...