I recently began the Know your Farmer, Know Your Food College tour, and one of the locations I visited was a farmer’s market in North Carolina. Many of the regionally and locally produced products we see at farmer’s markets have a helping hand from USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant program.

Sometimes it’s tough for a small or beginning rural business or cooperative to come up with the money for a feasibility study, marketing or packaging.  That’s where USDA’s Value Added Producer Grant program can help. Read more »

What do dairy farmers, NFL stars, and the Secretary of Agriculture have in common? They all braved the winter weather and traveled to the site of Super Bowl XLV to support the Fuel Up to Play 60 (FUTP60) program. FUTP60 conducted a kids’ football clinic at the NFL Experience, an interactive theme park at the Dallas Convention Center. The clinic, aimed at kids,  focused on the fundamentals to improve nutrition and physical activity in their schools and personal lives. Read more »

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. Read more »

USDA Forest Service Smokejumpers are trained to climb trees in case they, or their supplies, land in them. When Smokejumpers aren’t fighting wildfires, the USDA Forest Service calls on them to use their tree climbing skills to complete a variety of natural resource management projects, such as harvesting pine cones and constructing owl nesting boxes.

While many USDA Forest Service employees spend their summers working as Smokejumpers fighting wildfires in the west, they in turn spend their falls in the east working as Beetle Busters, helping the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) combat the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB). Read more »

If you have ever been bullied, Secretary Vilsack wants you to know that it gets better. Read more »

USDA filmmaker David Black traveled this spring to Afghanistan, where he produced a 17-minute film on the efforts of USDA agriculture advisors working in Afghanistan as part of intergovernmental Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

While he was away, he kept a personal journal about his experiences on the ground in Afghanistan. This excerpt is from April 28, 2009: Read more »