USDA Blog

USDA partnered for the first time with Women in Data for the non-governmental organization’s just-concluded Climate Sustainability Datathon, which is a friendly contest for people who really like to work with data.

Accurate crop mapping is a crucial process to informing reliable crop production estimates, addressing climate change, and developing strategies for sustainable agriculture.

There are many different approaches and practices when it comes to farming, but one thing is constant - to run your farm as a business, you need to be able to sell your product. To sell their product, a farmer or rancher needs to be visible to buyers and buyers need to have an easy way to reach...

Hackathons aim to solve real problems and USDA, along with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) and the California State Fair, hosted a competitive one this past July. Software developers, designers, entrepreneurs, farmers, farm consultants, marketers and others in...

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. Just like a smart phone helps users learn, communicate and make important decisions, smart technology—known as precision...

As I’ve learned over my years with the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), in order to make an impact, our information needs to meet the needs of the people who use the data we produce. And while we constantly try to gauge and meet their needs, it is imperative to speak to our data...

Cross-posted from the Alaska Dispatch News: For students heading back to school this month in Kodiak, it's anything but "class as usual." Because at Kodiak Island Borough School District, 400 miles from Anchorage and accessible only by airplane and ferry, ConnectED investments in high-speed internet...

We are entering a new era of information openness and transparency. Open data has the potential to spur economic innovation and social transformation. Focusing just on economic impacts, in 2013, for example, the consulting firm McKinsey estimated the possible global value of open data to be over $3...

Although Florida’s green-skin avocado industry may be a niche compared to Hass avocado operations in California, green-skin avocados are beloved by their growers and a staple for the communities that grew up eating them. With more than 60 varieties and peak maturity ranging from May to December, the...

Like nearly all organizations that use surveys to collect information, we have seen declining response rates in recent years. The value of accurate data is now more important than ever for decision-making on the farm, and by USDA farm program administrators, policy makers, researchers, market...