USDA Blog

March is National Nutrition Month. Throughout the month, USDA will be highlighting results of our efforts to improve access to safe, healthy food for all Americans and supporting the health of our next generation. West Texans fighting food insecurity have a new resource to combat hunger. The West...

Sussex County, Delaware’s only charter school, the former Sussex Academy of Arts & Sciences middle school, is being re-named “ Sussex Academy” as it expands to include a high school. But unlike most expansion projects, the academy is swapping its old building for an existing building that meets its...

The invasive brown marmorated stink bug causes problems for homeowners and farmers and threatens U.S. specialty crops valued at over $20 billion. Farmers rely on insecticide sprays to reduce crop-damaging stink bugs. Another strategy is using traps with lures to capture this pest.

Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs) play a unique role in USDA's service to rural America. They link the research and educational outreach capacity of the nation's public universities with communities, local decision makers, entrepreneurs, families, and farmers and ranchers to help address a...

This week, representatives from USDA have been down on the National Mall, staffing hands-on exhibits about food safety, bioenergy and even bees. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have, for years, been studying Colony Collapse disorder (CCD), which has been attacking honey bee colonies...

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Purdue University have developed a series of training videos that illustrate proper sanitation assessment techniques to evaluate shell egg processing equipment. While the practices in these videos are required...

As a parent, Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day is a chance to physically demonstrate what we as parents do while our children are in school. It’s an opportunity to show them that they can aspire to be anything they dream to be. When my daughter told me she had to share with her class what her...

Mention the words “hall of fame” to most people, and they’re likely to imagine a stellar baseball player or someone who’s written a string of hit songs. But at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, we have a Hall of Fame that isn’t about batting averages or popular tunes; it’s about changing the...

Hitting your target—and only your target—is a top priority when spraying pesticides from an airplane. And the use of a small object could be a big help in making sure that happens. That’s the focus of the research being conducted by Daniel Martin, an engineer with Agricultural Research Service’s...

Treating and recycling used municipal water for irrigation is not a new concept, but there may be an unforeseen consequence with that practice: Microplastics.