USDA Blog

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.

In June 2013, Secretary Vilsack outlined a vision for agricultural solutions to environmental challenges, which included creating the Regional Climate Hubs. In 2014, the USDA Climate Hubs were established in to serve as regional centers of climate change information and outreach to reduce risks. The...

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.

For more than a decade, USDA’s Climate Hubs has been at the forefront of supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts for U.S. farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners. Last week, the department significantly boosted its efforts globally, by launching the International Climate Hub.

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!

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) worked with Michigan’s Grand Traverse Band (GTB) of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians to remove blockages to natural water flow in streams and rivers through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). USDA invested over $18 million in federal...