USDA Blog

CNPP’s new Executive Director, Angela Tagtow, MS, RD, LD, closed out her first week with USDA by honoring the winners of the 2014 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge recipe contest at the White House during the Kids’ State Dinner on July 18. Below are her impressions from the event.

When USDA launched the Regional Conservation Partnership Program several months ago, we talked about our hope that this new way of doing business would build coalitions of unlikely partners and bring new money and resources for conservation projects to the table. The overwhelmingly positive response...

Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to see the many happy faces of children playing on the recreational fields of the Western Sussex Boys & Girls Club in Seaford, Del. They were there as part of a Summer Food Service Program showcasing USDA’s Eat Smart. Play Hard Campaign. It was easy to get...

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 the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. Where was the food on your plate grown? Do you know in which state the apple in your lunchbox was mostly likely...

America’s hunger for locally and regionally grown food has become a $7 billion-per-year market. That means more consumers are savoring farm-fresh food, and more farmers—especially small and mid-size farmers—are profiting from new markets for their products. It also means that a trove of useful...

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 the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. Cogongrass makes kudzu look like a lightweight. A perennial grass, it grows on every continent except Antarctica and has...

The 15 th Annual National Farmers Market Week is off to a great start! Farmers markets connect and unite people living in urban and rural environments, provide access to fresh, healthy and delicious foods, and—best of all—put a face to the farmers and ranchers who produce their wonderful wares. We...

The shiny green one-half-inch-long, one-eighth-inch-wide emerald ash borer has destroyed tens of millions of ash trees in the U.S. since the beetle’s discovery in 2002 in Detroit. The real Ash trees comprise around seven percent of the trees in eastern U.S. forests. In urban areas, ash trees make up...

John and Nancy Mims never imagined they would be running a dairy when they met at the University of Florida and married 40-some years ago. He was going to be an architect and a pilot, and she was going to be a nurse. They were going to move to the Caribbean. But then John was drafted. After a six...

Erik Chaffer considers himself an optimist. Still, he found himself feeling pretty low as he watched the Great Recession knock the legs out from under the rural Ohio ethanol plant he helped manage. “Everything was pretty good until July 2008. It was just a ‘perfect storm’ type of situation,” said...