California

USDA Secretary Vilsack had a busy Monday in California, making six stops to hold a business leader’s roundtable, promote the American Jobs Act, encourage Americans to “Make Half Your Plate Fruits and Vegetables,” meet with California agricultural commodity leaders and to drop in at the USDA state...

Recovery Act funding spurs a renaissance in backcountry trail maintenance. This year, visitors to the Los Padres National Forest, near Goleta, Calif., are seeing widespread wilderness trail improvements thanks to Recovery Act funds. Nearly $2.3 million was allocated to the forest for wilderness...

Members of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) attended a weeklong meeting hosted by U.S. officials in Monterey, Calif. The UPOV’s Technical Working Party for Vegetables, made up of delegates from 13 countries, was also able to observe a lettuce field-trial...

With just over three weeks left in the 2011 Feds Feed Families campaign, we are nearing the finish line of what has been an extraordinary show of support, commitment and compassion from USDA employees across the country.

“When we started, there weren’t any other farms locally doing what we were doing,” says Ryan Casey, of Blue House Farms, outside of Pescadero, Calif.

Shasta County landowner Karen Freitas has worked with the staff of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) since 2009, when she sought help recovering from a devastating wild fire that had burned much of her 160-acre tree farm the previous summer.

Most people are unfamiliar with the town of Grass Valley, California- a small rural area located in the pocket of northern Nevada County with a population of 12,860 and 4.7 square miles of land. So, just what can someone find in this small town? A lot of community support and dedication. This...

As we reflect on this important month that celebrates our nation’s 235th anniversary, I thought I’d share a story about how Farm Service Agency (FSA) in California is helping people achieve and celebrate their own version of the American Dream. This morning, I visited with a Liberian immigrant...

If we’ve learned anything from the ‘Judgment in Paris,’ it is that competition is a good thing and it pushes producers to improve their products overtime. On May 20, the Wine Institute of California partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) office...

As we celebrate National Dairy Month, I'd like to recognize dairy producers across California and around the nation for their productivity and innovation.