Last month, hundreds of people from around the world gathered in Des Moines, Iowa, to honor this year’s World Food Prize Laureate, Dr. Daniel Hillel, for his pioneering scientific work in micro-irrigation. His drip technology revolutionized the way farmers watered crops and increased food production in the arid regions of the Middle East and other parts of the world for the past five decades.

Dr. Hillel’s recognition inspired many in attendance including Dr. Rajashekhara Rao Korada, a senior scientist from India currently in the United States for the Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Program, a program named in honor of the “Father of the Green Revolution.” During his 12-week fellowship at Louisiana State University, he’s studying pest management strategies for sweet potato crops. Read more »

Grain exports represent 17 percent of the total cargo that flows through the Panama Canal and 90 percent of those grains are from the United States. Under the U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement (Panama TPA), which entered into force Oct. 31, U.S. grains and other agricultural products exported to Panama will be completely duty-free within 15 years.

The U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement (Panama TPA) entered into force Oct. 31, expanding market access for U.S. agricultural exporters in one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. The Panama TPA is the last in a trio of trade agreements (South Korea and Colombia are the others) that altogether are expected to boost U.S. agricultural exports by $2.2 billion when fully implemented. Read more »

Dutch Chef Eric Troost prepares an upscale dish using U.S. beef during a cooking demonstration for about 130 Belgian chefs Sept. 24. The demo was part of the first U.S. beef tasting event held in Belgium, which was hosted by the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) office in The Hague, Netherlands, and the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF). The tasting was part of ongoing efforts to help expand U.S. beef exports to the European Union (EU). (Photo courtesy FAS The Hague)

The European Union (EU) is a relatively new market for U.S. beef exports. It wasn’t until August 2009 when the United States began exporting high-quality beef (marbled with a high fat content) to the EU under a negotiated tariff rate quota for non-hormone treated beef. Read more »

A Bangladeshi factory worker monitors the production of biscuits made from U.S. donated wheat. The donation was delivered to the World Food Programme, a Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) McGovern-Dole program participant that works to provide food assistance in more than 73 countries. The biscuits will be distributed to about 2,000 schools in the poorest areas of Bangladesh. (Photo courtesy U.S. Embassy New Dehli)

Approximately 350,000 school children in Bangladesh now have access to a daily snack after the U.S. government recently donated more than 10,000 metric tons of wheat to the country through the Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program. Read more »

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 profile.

From desktops to tablets, and from floppy disks to flash drives, technology is constantly changing. Each new idea is developed in an effort to solve old problems.  That’s why the White House issued a plan last year to help stimulate our nation’s economic development and create jobs by accelerating Federal science and technology (S&T) innovations.

To support that plan, USDA agencies with science research missions that develop innovations in agriculture and that support businesses that adopt innovations for commercialization will work together to foster technology transfer to support U.S. business growth. Read more »

Workers hold a net full of tilapia at a fish farm in Pakistan. The fish are part of the American Soybean Association’s (ASA) World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) program called “FEEDing Pakistan.” The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) helped fund the program, which aims to enhance the country’s growing aquaculture sector through trial fish feeding using high–protein, floating fish feed produced from U.S. soybean meal. (Courtesy World Initiative for Soy in Human Health)

An innovative Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)-funded program in Pakistan is not only improving local diets, but is creating jobs, training workers and helping create a thriving aquaculture industry with U.S. soy. Read more »