October 2011

Does your job relate to the activities you enjoy in your personal life?  Mine does.  In fact, no matter what challenges I’ve faced over the years, I’ve been able to stay sane because I am doing what I love to do, and I keep a positive mental attitude.

When I go to the grocery store or visit my local farmers market, on the top of my shopping list are healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, dried fruits, and nuts. I know that these items, part of a larger agricultural group classified as specialty crops, are a critical component of maintaining a healthy diet and that it is important for me to include them in my family’s meals. Making sure that all Americans have access to healthy foods like specialty crops is a priority for me and for the USDA.

A Forest Service Recovery Act-funded arboriculture training program is helping young trainees learn basic tree care, nursery, and natural resource restoration skills while revitalizing urban areas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Like the mythical phoenix, the very real longleaf pine is rising from the ashes of near-extinction to reclaim its native range in Virginia with the help of committed partners and landowners like Bill Owen.

A musician by profession, Owen is a conservationist at heart who still lives in the family home in Yale, Va. By working with a team of six agencies, including USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, he hopes to realize his dream of planting 1,000 contiguous acres of longleaf pine in his lifetime.

Hi, I’m Dr. Sunny Geiser and I’m in the Area Veterinarian in Charge (AVIC) trainee program in USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) Western Region.  I’m currently stationed in Fort Collins, CO.

I grew up with horses and livestock and always enjoyed working with them.  The medical aspect of their care fascinated me, so I decided to pursue a career in veterinary medicine.  After vet school, I worked in both private practice and state regulatory medicine before joining APHIS.  There’s a broader role to regulatory medicine and it feels like you are doing a greater service.

Last week, I was honored to lead USDA’s first-ever agricultural trade mission to Vietnam, which is quickly becoming one of the United State’s largest markets for agricultural exports.

While there,   I met with government and agricultural officials, witnessed trade relationships developing between U.S. and Vietnamese companies, and visited some of Vietnam’s most successful agricultural production and development sites.

Local teens recently teamed up with the Forest Service to help clean-up an abandoned marijuana grow site on the Methow Valley Ranger District on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington.

In business, it’s important to trust . . . but also to verify.  Whether you want to buy or sell U.S. produce, it can sometimes be tricky deciding who to deal with and verifying their credentials. When it comes time to make a move, The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA) division can help.

PACA facilitates fair trading practices in the marketing of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables in interstate and foreign commerce thereby ensuring that dealers get what they pay for and also get paid for what they sell—even if customers go out of business, declare bankruptcy, or refuse to pay for produce received.

Risk management doesn’t mean trying to address all risks in all ways, “riding off in all directions,” spending money, time, energy, and social capital trying to drive every risk we identify to zero. There is no shortage of risks to manage. But neither does it mean just “hunkering down,” waiting to see what happens. No-action can be the riskiest action of all. And it’s not a very good way to learn. To learn forward, you have to lean forward. As my grandfather told me, “You can’t steer that bicycle unless you get it moving.”

Risk management is useful for helping us to decide and to explain how we have decided what not to do as much as what to do. It doesn’t make the decisions any easier, but it can help us make tradeoffs and opportunities more clear and guide us to making the highest possible reduction across multiple risks. We will need all the help we can get in sorting through which risks to handle first and how far to go in reducing particular risks.