USDA Blog

Nationally, we are seeing extreme to exceptional (D3 to D4) drought conditions fall to their lowest point in more than 6 years. Nowhere is that change more dramatic than in California. The current (February 21, 2017) Drought Monitor for California notes the disappearance of D3/D4 from California. At...

Depending on where you live in the United States, the first thing that likely comes to mind for agriculture production systems are the large fields of corn, soybeans, wheat or cotton seen growing each summer. But spend a few minutes looking at CropScape, a color-coded map that charts where almost a...

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we hear from Kristina Fast, a civil servant with USDA’s Farm Service Agency in Minnesota. To learn more and connect with other women leaders in...

What do you think of when March rolls around? Basketball fans are probably gearing up for March Madness, history buffs might think of Caesar and the Ides of March, and then there’s the proverb that March comes in like a lion and out like lamb (or is it in like a lamb and out like a lion?)… Anyway...

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 USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. Every day, National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) statisticians work hard to produce timely, accurate and useful...

It’s a question with major public-health implications: Could antibiotics and other widely used medications get into our food supply when they are flushed into our sewers? To try to answer that question, researchers from USDA and Penn State University (PSU) assessed whether some commonly used...

When most people think of forests, science isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but, perhaps, it should. That’s because the U.S. Forest Service Research and Development program oversees projects across many science disciplines including forestry, genetics, wildlife, forest products and wildfire...

Within minutes of being notified of an impending storm, the employees of the US Department of Agriculture’s National Finance Center (NFC) in New Orleans felt the devastating impact of the EF-3 tornado that descend upon the two-story building with enough force to tear away whole sections of the brick...

Congratulations to everyone who joined us for the MyPlate New Year’s Challenge! Over the course of these last five weeks, participants incorporated each of the MyPlate food groups - dairy, fruits, vegetables, protein foods, and grains - into their days in an effort to find and maintain a healthy...

The hope in healthy soil is taking root across America. Farmers, ranchers, researchers, conservationists, non-profit organizations, foodies and others are all working to help regenerate our working lands by improving the health of function of our nation’s soil. So inspired by what they’re learning...