USDA Blog

This is the first in series of Organic 101 pieces that will explore the different rules within the USDA organic regulations. When it comes to organic foods, it’s just as important to know what isn’t allowed as what is. The organic standards are process-based, meaning they establish the rules for an...

Positive brand recognition—having a brand the buyer can trust—is the cornerstone of marketing success. The same applies to USDA and, more specifically, the USDA organic seal. Since its origination in 2000, the green and white seal for certified organic products has become one of the world’s most...

“When we started, there weren’t any other farms locally doing what we were doing,” says Ryan Casey, of Blue House Farms, outside of Pescadero, Calif.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) was all ears on Tuesday as it opened up its hall to organic stakeholders to ask the question, “What activities should the Department focus on to serve the organic community?” Many took the opportunity to respond. During a day-long listening session hosted by USDA...

April Jones went into farming to grow good food, and she has succeeded. Unexpectedly, along the way she’s also managed to grow a community.

Minor Morgan has promoted organic farming for decades. And since the early 1990s, Morgan, executive director of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Community Farm, has been working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop a farming process that is economically and environmentally...

Producers of organically-grown poultry and eggs will now find it easier to access market information about their segment of the organic industry with the release of a new user-friendly Market News report launched this week by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). The weekly report offers a...

Bristlecone pines are a small group of trees that reach an age believed by many scientists to be far greater than that of any other living organism known to man -- up to nearly 5,000 years.

On a spring day in Chesterfield, South Carolina, a family works in unison to manage cattle, sheep and goats. This is a daily routine and a way of life for Paxton Pegues, his wife Olivia, and their four children Rachel, Marcellus, Spencer, and Lanier.

This week, I joined my colleagues from all over the world for the 37th Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. This bi -annual conference brings together world leaders in food and agriculture to discuss important issues related to agriculture...