USDA Blog

Fifty years after the creation of National Agriculture Day, America’s farmers, ranchers and private forestland owners find themselves on the front lines of climate change. They are uniquely positioned to deliver solutions by implementing climate-smart practices that conserve natural resources, build...

Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)’s 2023 Engineer of the Year, Peter Clark is clear about the importance of what people like him do. Engineers “harness the math, harness the statistics … and apply science” to figure out how to solve a problem, such as building a dam to help capture and...

Working in partnership with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), farmers are using proven conservation practices to help improve water quality downstream. Our customers are stewards of our nation’s farmland, voluntarily stepping up to the plate to make an impact. They are improving...

It’s the time of year to do your fall garden cleanup. Rather than the tedious task of raking and bagging leaves and taking them to the landfill, the best way to reduce greenhouse gases and benefit your garden is to leave the leaves!

USDA just launched a new research and visualization tool that summarizes published scientific research on bird species-vegetation relationships in the Eastern and Boreal Forests of North America. The tool, Literature Gateway: A Systematic Map of Bird-Vegetation Relationships in Eastern and Boreal...

This year marks the 133 rd anniversary of the dam breach that took the lives of more than 2,200 people and galvanized the nation to ensure such a tragic event could not happen again. On May 31, 1889, torrential rain and subsequent flooding caused the South Fork Dam to fail near Johnstown...

Did you know that worms can recycle your food scraps? Vermicomposting, or worm composting, turns food scraps into a beneficial soil amendment that can be used in home gardens, landscaping, turfgrass, farms and more. Over one-third of all available food goes uneaten through loss or waste. Composting...

During his first visit as Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Dr. Homer Wilkes announced additional funding to combat wildfire in Nevada and California.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides extensive data on the Nation’s conservation program activities through its RCA Data Viewer. And now, data visualizations have been added to the tool, making the data easier to interpret, sort, and download.

Recently, the Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting (SSWSF) Program published new 30-year hydroclimatic normal values or “normals” for snowpack and precipitation at western U.S. monitoring stations. This information serves as a benchmark for assessing water supply conditions and is used by...