USDA Blog

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...

Recently I had the honor to participate in the 2011 American Sheep Industry Conference. It made me feel proud to participate as a representative of USDA, as a public servant; talking, listening and learning from sheep and goat producers as well as other stakeholders in the food, livestock and...

Kingbrook Rural Water System, Inc. in Arlington, South Dakota, (KBRW) is spread over a service area of nearly 3,000 square miles, larger than some states. The distances involved create opportunity for failures of equipment or facilities due to natural or man-made causes. Any calamity can cause...

Snow, sleet, ice, and wind can wreak havoc on our every day lives. Winter! It's a fact of modern life: sometimes the power goes out. If your power goes out, knowing how to keep food safe can help minimize the loss of food and reduce the risk of foodborne illness.

On Monday, January 31, I had the honor of launching the U.S. Agribusiness Trade and Investment Mission to Peru and Ecuador in a room full of U.S., Peruvian, and Ecuadorian business leaders, government officials, and news reporters.

USDA has launched a resource to assist in expanding access to healthy food and eliminating food deserts: www.usda.gov/fooddeserts. As outlined by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative, three Federal Departments – Agriculture, Treasury, and Health and Human Services – are working...

In “The Role of Nutrition Programs in Agriculture: From Tractor to Table,” USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has organized a session at this years Agricultural Outlook Forum addressing how the increase in consumer participation in the nutrition assistance programs has expanded FNS’ role not...

Each year, APHIS protects millions of animals nationwide that are covered by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). The Act, and accompanying regulations developed by APHIS, set Federal standards of care for animals that are bred at the wholesale level, used in research, transported commercially, or...

In an address last month to students of the Peter Kiewit Institute and members of Nebraska’s agriculture industry, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack cited numerous examples of how USDA is meeting President Obama’s challenge to Americans to “out innovate, out educate and out build the competition...

Last week in his State of the Union address, President Obama talked about re-inventing our country “to make America the best place on Earth to do business.” He talked about creating new jobs and industries to re-energize our economy. He talked about the goal of doubling exports by the close of 2014...