USDA Blog

A three day visit to Missouri, the “Show Me State” allowed me to join Janie Dunning, Rural Development State Director, to see how rural areas benefiting from infrastructure investments made possible through USDA Rural Development programs and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( Recovery Act)...

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog. The bay area of California is home to some celebrity chefs but it is the lesser known student chefs at Skyline High School that are making the bulbs flash and the critics swoon. Well before the official judging team arrived at Skyline High School in Oakland...

Earlier this week, Judith Canales, Administrator for Rural Business and Cooperative Programs for USDA Rural Development, stopped by the GM assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to discuss Flex-Fuel opportunities available to American business owners. Canales’ visit was part of a three-state tour in...

This holiday weekend, grills across the country will be fired up, bringing family and friends together to enjoy traditional, finger-licking American barbeque and celebrate the unofficial start of summer.

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: Historical Charleston, S.C., blends the traditional Southern American, English, French, and West African elements into a celebration of its colorful and rich culture. Burke Middle & High School in Charleston celebrated this mix of colorful culture with its...

Access to quality healthcare in Northeastern Minnesota received a major boost on May 20. That’s when officials broke ground on an expansion project that will add over 80,000 square-feet to Community Memorial Hospital (CMH) in Cloquet, Minn. During the ceremony, officials also highlighted how the...

You might say that Dave Kretschmann has engineered his way into Major League Baseball’s history books. Kretschmann’s work as a research general engineer led him to figure out why so many bats used by Major League Baseball were shattered. “Since late in the 2008 season, we’ve seen video of every...

In January, President Obama called upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture and all other U.S. agencies to perform a government-wide review of current federal regulations to update, streamline and remove excessive rules. This review, prompted by Executive Order 13563, was intended to minimize burdens...

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: Located in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville, N.C., is known for its rich heritage, arts, and fine dining. Recently, students from Ira B. Jones Elementary School, located in Asheville, shared a taste of another well-known region of fine dining –...

More than 1,300 community developers from 47 states converged on Des Moines, Iowa, this week to attend the 2011 National Main Streets Conference organized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. A key theme repeated during the conference illustrated how communities with healthy Main Street...