USDA Blog

Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager spent a busy week recently traveling throughout the heartland as a part of President Obama’s Rural Tour. Under Secretary Tonsager attended a Rural Tour event in Iowa with President Obama and Secretary Vilsack, and then continued to South Dakota...

Last week as I walked around the Iowa State Fair, I was reminded about the power of philanthropy. The Iowa State Fair’s Blue Ribbon Foundation has raised more than $80 million since its inception in 1993 and helped make numerous facilities improvements all around the fairgrounds including: a new...

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to get out of Washington, DC and travel to small towns and farm towns in the heartland of the country. I sat down with small business owners, farmers and ranchers in Iowa; I had lunch with veterans in Cannon Falls, Minnesota; and I talked to plant workers at...

Cross posted from the White House Rural Champions of Change website: Sue is the Executive Director at the Vernon Economic Development Association in southwest Wisconsin.

Cross posted from the White House Rural Champions of Change website: Lance Morgan is an enrolled member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and President, CEO, and co-founder of Ho-Chunk, Inc., the award-winning economic development corporation owned by the Winnebago Tribe.

Cross posted from the White House blog: Today, I am hosting a forum focused on the rural economy at the Iowa state fair. But, Rural America has been in the spotlight all this week as I joined President Obama to travel across parts of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, visiting rural communities to...

Earlier this week, President Obama along with Secretary Vilsack and members of the White House Rural Council hosted the White House Rural Economic Forum in Peosta, Iowa where the President announced new jobs initiatives focused on increasing access to capital, job training and health care services...

Cross posted from the White House blog: Yesterday, President Obama announced that our Departments will jointly invest $510 million over the next three years to develop the domestic capacity for advanced biofuels. The funds will be leveraged with at least a one-to-one private industry match to...

Cross-posted from the White House blog. Today, the President announced several important new initiatives to continue strengthening the rural economy and to create jobs in rural areas. As part of the White House Rural Council’s efforts to improve federal government coordination on rural economic...

Cross posted from the White House blog: Today, the White House Rural Council released a new report titled Jobs and Economic Security for Rural America (pdf). This is a product of what we have been working on since President Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the first White House Rural...