USDA Blog

While dogs are man’s best friend, they are also one of the most efficient friends we have in protecting American agriculture and natural resources from the threat of invasive pests. Last month a dog trained by U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)...

What are the macro trends in food production and policy? In this blog, USDA Senior Economist Anne Effland gives an overview of how consumers are shaping the way food is grown and how USDA is supporting the evolving food system. Read more in the article Effland co-authored with Carolyn Dimitri in the...

Remember “plastics make it possible!” – the advertisement campaign from the 1980s? There’s a new kind of plastic in town 30 years later – bioplastics.

Each year, agricultural experts from around the world gather in Paris to crunch numbers, analyze trends, and produce a 10-year global agriculture outlook report. I was among those analysts, and today, we unveiled our collective efforts in the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2018-2027.

Despite its relatively small size and location in Memphis, Tennessee, the Agricultural Marketing Service, Standardization & Engineering Division (S&E) within the USDA Cotton & Tobacco Program (C&T) plays a giant role in both the U.S. and international cotton marketing systems.

Donating used clothing to charities obviously helps clothe and employ fellow Americans, but other benefits fly below the radar: exporting worn textiles provides income to low- and middle-income foreign countries, and also helps the environment. That win-win-win situation gives new meaning to the...

With May being World Trade Month, it is worth noting that the source of data to determine the U.S. supply of crops and livestock is America’s farmers and ranchers who fill out surveys from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). These statistics feed directly into the monthly World...

It’s World Trade Month and a good time to consider a few of the ways that USDA helps advance trade. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) plays a vital role in the free flow of agricultural trade by keeping U.S. agriculture free from pests and diseases and certifying that...

The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) is a monthly report providing a global look at the markets for key agricultural products. The many users include agricultural commodity traders, agricultural producers, processors, retailers and consumers, input suppliers, livestock and...

Did you know that the United States is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the European Union? Agricultural trade supports American jobs and spurs non-farm economic activity. In 2016, U.S. agricultural exports required over one million full-time civilian jobs, including 764,000...