USDA Blog

You’re working from home and facing constant interruption by your child who needs help with a chore, schoolwork, or preparing a snack. Sound familiar? Many of us are wearing several hats: the working-at-home professional, the teacher, and the child entertainer.

As a multiple-use agency, the USDA Forest Service works to balance the many uses and benefits the American people expect from their national forests and grasslands.

Often when we think of rural broadband, we think about how internet access has revolutionized the way Americans consume media, conduct business, learn, and receive medical care via telemedicine. Over the last two decades, USDA has been making significant progress in connecting rural communities to...

September is Food Safety Education Month and it’s a perfect time to test your children’s food safety knowledge before you let them take over your kitchen. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, many children have spent more time at home – and visited the kitchen numerous times a day.

With support from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Multistate Research Fund, researchers at 17 land-grant universities are working together to develop automated systems that work well for labor-intensive specialty crops like fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery plants. A multi...

Established in 1992, the 1890 National Scholars Program is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the 1890 Land-Grant Universities. College students accepted into the program receive valuable on-the-job training with USDA agencies and are often eligible for conversion to full...

An opaque, autumn haze smothers much of the western United States from the millions of acres burning across forests in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains. Fire size and severity are rising in tandem with record heat, low winter snowpack, decreased summer rains, and abundant forest fuels...

Did you know that USDA has declared August as Tree Check Month? That’s because August is the peak time of year to spot the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB)—an invasive wood-boring beetle that attacks 12 types of hardwood trees in North America, such as maples, elms, horse chestnuts, birches and willows...

In 2018, Mel Curtis, Branch Director of the Moshannon Valley YMCA of Centre County and Pauline Rabb, CEO with Cen-Clear Child Services, joined forces to retrofit a 72-passenger bus with a kitchen and appliances and dubbed it The Travelin’ Table Mobile Feeding Bus. The initiative was created to serve...

Plant pollination by animals is critical for healthy ecosystems and an estimated 85% of the world’s flowering plants depend on animals, mostly insects, like bees, for pollination.