USDA Blog

Nebraska news media, including local daily and weekly newspapers and radio stations around the state highlighted the energy tour conducted by U SDA Rural Development Nebraska State Director Maxine Moul on March 23. She met with three Nebraska businesses that were assisted through the Rural Energy...

The Spotted Bear Ranger Station at the Flathead National Forest in western Montana generates electricity using micro-hydropower. Like a traditional hydro dam, this small water system converts the energy of flowing water into electricity. When the water level of Addition Creek on the ranger station...

If you teach it, you must live it. That is the wisdom Steven R. Kochemba adheres to. Kochemba is a science teacher and the athletic director for the Joseph Badger School District in Trumbull County north of Youngstown, Ohio. He’s also a farmer. Among his other science courses, Kochemba teaches 8 th...

John Miller got the call at 12:45 a.m. on Sept. 7, 2007. Freeborn Lumber Company – the business John’s grandfather bought in 1946 and John purchased from his father in 1986 – was burning to the ground. Less than 30 minutes later, the nearly 100-year-old building was destroyed. Lightning struck a...

Did you know that USDA manages 193 million acres of land; occupies approximately 89 million square feet of office and laboratory space and operates over 23,000 buildings? And if this isn’t enough, USDA also operates a fleet of over 40,000 motor vehicles and equipment. With statistics like these, it...

Chris Holliday has more pastureland than he needs for his cows—335 acres to be exact. So when USDA introduced a way to use that land to help create clean energy while reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, he saw it as an opportunity. “I thought it was a good idea and I had a good feeling about it...

The Biomass Crop Assistance Program, or BCAP, is still in its infancy, but its potential success has producers and businesses wanting more. “We have people on a waiting list,” said Tim Wooldridge, Arkansas project manager with MFA Oil Biomass. MFA was selected by USDA to manage three of nine project...

As the team at Legend Seeds of De Smet, South Dakota, gears up for spring and the 2012 growing season, they do so from a newly-constructed, state-of-the-art facility, located just east of their former space on Highway 14. The new office, seed lab and expanded warehouse space were designed to better...

The sun shone brightly on the 896 panel solar array at Heidel Hollow Farm in Germansville, Penn., as USDA Rural Development Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl L. Cook, other USDA officials and guests celebrated the farm’s successful renewable energy project and the announcement of a new USDA Renewable...

Hundreds of people, over the web or in person, learned about the financing and technology of anaerobic digester systems, the subject of a pair of webinars recently hosted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A broad spectrum of individuals participated including academics, farmers, and...