USDA Blog

Hardy Telecommunications, Inc., a nonprofit rural telephone cooperative, was recently awarded a $9,494,483 loan and a $22,153,791 grant through USDA Rural Development’s Telecommunications program. This funding was made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( Recovery Act).

Several Rural Development funded project sites in were visited by officials from Washington, D.C. in Texas recently to highlighted USDA’s commitment to strengthening rural communities.

Cross-posted from the White House Blog I’ve spent the last few days here in Iowa, a state that I was honored to serve as Governor for eight years. Yesterday, I walked the grounds of the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. The fair is refreshingly the same each year, but also a snapshot of changing rural...

Last week I completed three weeks working at the Deepwater Horizon Unified Area Command (UAC) in New Orleans. The UAC is a command center made up of Coast Guard, BP, Federal and State employees working together to address the environmental-, public health- and wildlife-related concerns associated...

Originally published in The Detroit News: Today, 306 million Americans have food on their table thanks to a small and noble group of professional gamblers: America’s farmers and ranchers. Only about 1 percent of Americans operate a farm or ranch and these hardworking few not only help provide the...

Earlier this month, USDA Rural Development Area Director Lyndon Nichols, Helen Rush-Lloyd, Constituent Services Director from U.S. Rep. John F. Tierney’s office, and I delivered 80lbs of donations to a local Gloucester, Mass. food pantry named "The Open Door." This food pantry has a slogan "Feeding...

“Today the conversations I have with my business colleagues, family and friends are focused around the best ways to rebuilding the U.S. economy,” said Jerry Lorenzen, President of World Food Processing, in his opening remarks at a public event at his company’s headquarters in Oskaloosa, Iowa, last...

The Warwick USDA Service Center is 100 pound closer to their goal of donating 250 pounds of food to local food banks this summer thanks to a generous donation by Holly Pashnik of Cumberland, RI. In celebration of her ninth birthday, Holly asked her guests to bring non-perishable food items to help...

A trip to your local plant nursery or florist is a lot like taking a trip around the world. You can find anything from boxwood from England, to roses from Colombia, to tulip bulbs from the Netherlands—the list goes on and on! Just as a myriad of plants, seeds and cut flowers come to us from around...

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. In 2004, as a junior at Montana State University (MSU), Ashley Williams knew she wanted to use her geography degree to...