USDA Blog

The Forest Service’s i-Tree Pest Detection software, due to be released next week, is going to help urban foresters curb the spread of invasive species and the dead trees left in their wake. Cities and communities are frequently the first site of introduction for exotic pests, where they remain...

Three major problems plague the world today and what happens in agriculture will help shape the resolution of these issues, according to former President Bill Clinton.

The city of Elmore, Minnesota, soon will have modern water, wastewater, and storm water treatment equipment. To top it off, the city also is looking forward to finishing its new library. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has made funding rural libraries a top priority. Rural Development funded six...

In the sub-Saharan nation of Mali, Dr. Boubacar M. Seck is a leader in helping to prevent highly contagious and transmissible animal diseases. As a researcher, Dr. Seck is working with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and...

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: In the President’s recent State of Union Address, he spoke candidly about winning the future. I can’t think of a better way to achieve that than by ensuring our Nation’s children are provided a healthy school environment to learn, grow and thrive.

The Weeks Act, which went into effect on March 1, 1911, has been identified as one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation in American history. In the early 1900s the public began to embrace a more proactive attitude toward conserving public lands. Just the year before, in 1910...

Once a month in winter and spring, snow surveyors from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) head for the hills to measure the mountain snowpack. These trained observers ski, snowshoe or snowmobile to established snow measurement courses to record snow data the old fashioned way – by...

I was honored to host a panel last week at the Department of Agriculture’s Ag Outlook Forum to showcase the impact of USDA broadband programs on so many in rural communities. Our February 25 th Rural Development panel, “Building a Stronger Rural Infrastructure: Broadband,” portrayed the ripple...

Halfway around the world, a farmer in India stands proudly in the winner’s circle with his cow. Mr. S. Sukharpreet Singh Rode, the farmer, is a 2008 graduate of the Cochran Fellowship Program, an educational exchange program administered by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).

If you’ve ever remodeled an existing home, you can appreciate this problem. Sometimes things just get complicated. The Kenai Peninsula Food Bank in Alaska needed to grow. The original 9,000 square foot building, constructed in 1997, no longer met the needs of the area, so an expansion was undertaken...