USDA Blog

Each day U.S. farmers and ranchers make thousands of management decisions, ranging from when and what to plant to weighing options for conserving their operation’s natural resources. They depend on an array of experts, research and data to inform these decisions. One of their sources is the Natural...

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.

If you follow the #PeoplesGarden on social media, you’ve seen informative videos by Jorge Penso, the lead gardener at the national headquarters People’s Garden in Washington, D.C.

Happy Compromise Farm + Sanctuary grows nutritious food for their local community distributed through a “free farm stand.” Though surrounded by farms in the rural Southern Tier of New York, the area is a food desert with a 16% poverty rate, a condition that often leads to higher risk for chronic...

Alcorn State University graduate Christopher Epps learned firsthand how a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) investment in a student’s educational career can have a lifetime impact.

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

California native Floyd D. Harris III knows that perseverance and hard work pay off. A recent graduate of Southern University, an 1890 land-grant university in Louisiana, Harris applied several times to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/ 1890 National Scholars Program.

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...

A sustainable and just local food system for Native Americans is the goal of an Arizona nonprofit. The Ajo Center for Sustainable Agriculture (Ajo CSA), a Native American-governed 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is working with the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona to preserve and revitalize...

If you really want your garden to bloom, consider adding high-nutrient compost to your soil. In the People’s Garden at USDA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., we set up a vermicompost system, or a system that uses worms to help with the composting process!