Conservation

After spending much of August out of Washington, Congress is back – and rural America is watching closely, hoping for passage of a Food, Farm and Jobs Bill as soon as possible. With farmers facing the worst drought in decades this summer and the current Farm Bill set to expire on September 30 of...

When Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe water resource professionals discovered that 60 percent of the Minnesota reservation’s septic systems were sub-standard or failing, they feared for the reservation’s health, indigenous rice fields, and fish populations. Shirley Nordrum, a Leech Lake Extension educator...

Imagine traveling 2,000 miles from home for the first time to trade high-rise buildings for towering trees, city lights for twinkling stars, and an urban cacophony for the melodies of songbirds. For most of us, this would be a vacation. For six Baltimore teenagers, it was a journey to work long...

Recently, representatives of USDA Rural Development and other federal agencies held a collaboration meeting with the federally recognized tribes of the Ahtna Region, Alaska. The meeting was the fourth in a series of government-to-government Tribal Collaboration Meetings scheduled with tribes in...

The First Stewards: Coastal People Address Climate Change symposium was recently held in Washington, D.C. This meeting brought coastal area Native Americans, Alaska Natives and indigenous U.S. Pacific Islanders together with scientists, non-governmental organizations and policy makers to discuss the...

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is working with Land’s Sake, a non-profit organization in Weston, Mass., to improve soil health and to install an irrigation system and a high tunnel on their working organic farm. The Land’s Sake farm has been in operation since 1980, when the...

Deacon Willie Moseley nurtures not only his church’s congregation, but also the 40 acres of forest that surround it. Antioch Baptist Church in Lauderdale County, Miss. has owned the land for almost a century, but the church has recently formed a new vision for caring for this forest. Starting in the...

Each July, more than 9,500 people pedal across the state of Iowa, covering a total distance of more than 400 miles in just seven days. The Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) attracts cyclists from across the globe. Cyclists travel from one Iowa town to the next, enjoying the...

The annual Feds Feed Families food drive is a summer-long effort, but USDA employees in Missouri donate to the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri all year long. Eight years ago, Tara Griffin, a Missouri Farm Service Agency state office employee, took the initiative to organize USDA...

A Kansas family and their neighbor are working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to increase habitat for the lesser prairie-chicken—while also benefiting their grazing lands. Glen Mull and his daughter, Amy Harter, collaborate with Tom Turner to co-manage the grassland they...