January 2011

Cross-posted from the Let's Move! blog:

Earlier this fall, in conjunction with International Chefs Day, Chef Melinda Burrows had the opportunity to team with Fremont Elementary School in Alhambra, California, to help launch their Chefs Move to Schools program.

They did so in grand style. With three school assemblies focusing on harvests, the popular event centered around chef-led demonstrations featuring spaghetti squash, pumpkins, and other varieties of healthful foods.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently awarded $40 million in Sustainable Community Challenge Grants to help support local planning designed to integrate affordable housing, good jobs and public transportation.  These grants are designed to foster reform and reduce barriers to achieving affordable, economically vital and sustainable communities. The funds will be used by communities, large and small, to address local challenges to integrating transportation and housing.

Small businesses are the backbone of this country. They employ nearly half of the workers in rural America and are an integral part of the American economy.

Today, Congress will vote on whether or not to repeal this new law, just as its benefits are beginning to reach rural Americans. Repeal of the health care law would result in higher health insurance costs for thousands of small businesses. We cannot afford to let that happen.

Recent news tells us that the American economy is continuing to move in the right direction, creating private sector jobs for twelve months in a row.  The health care law signed by President Obama last year, the Affordable Care Act, has done its part to increase economic certainty in rural America by expanding health insurance options, strengthening Medicare and Medicaid, and providing tax relief to businesses. And although families across the nation are already seeing the benefits of this new law, this week some in Congress want to repeal the law. This would be a huge mistake for rural America.

This fall USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) successfully completed its final round of grant awards under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).  In the last year and a half, we’ve done more to bridge the digital divide for rural Americans than many ever thought possible.  The Recovery Act has unleashed an historic level of investment in rural high speed telecommunications infrastructure that will create new jobs, new services and new opportunities across the countryside.

Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe the way I felt on the first day of my internship with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. There was so much to learn—program acronyms, database information, how to do a field check…But I was told by my co-workers that I would learn fast.

And two and a half months and one bottle of Tylenol later, I realized that they were right. I was catching on. Slowly.

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.

1935:  It was the year when baseball legend Babe Ruth hung up his spikes, and New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps extended a helping hand to a nation devastated by the Dust Bowl and gripped by the Great Depression.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 enabled USDA Rural Development to help more than 80,000 families in rural communities secure safe, decent, affordable homes.   In the depths of the recession in early 2009, new home construction and private sector mortgage lending virtually ground to a halt in rural America.

We here at USDA have been working on improving insurance coverage for America’s farmers and ranchers.  In particular, we have been working hard to improve insurance coverage for dairy producers.  In recent years, dairy farmers across the country faced a crisis and thousands considered bankruptcy.  One of the ways in which USDA has taken action is by improving the Livestock Gross Margin for Dairy Cattle plan of insurance.

Recent estimates indicate only nine percent of family farm income comes from farming and fewer than half of our nation’s farmers and ranchers list farming as their primary occupation.