USDA Blog

The Raggeds Wilderness, a nearly 65,000-acre area on the Gunnison and White River National Forests near Paonia, Colorado, is prime elk habitat with herd numbers in the hundreds. Acres of undisturbed coniferous forests are interspersed with open slopes of wet meadows thick with grasses and sedges, a...

Something we do every day for survival is something we often take for granted – breathing. And a very important component of breathing is clean air. Air quality has a direct effect not only on the health of people, but also ecosystems. The Air Program in the Eastern and Southern regions of the U.S...

Cross-posted from the White House Blog. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a driving force in job creation and economic renewal in rural America.

A Forest Service Recovery Act grant to the Land-of-Sky Regional Council (LOSRC) to implement the Western North Carolina Forest Products Cooperative Marketing Project has provided the momentum to help local businesses expand and diversify while offering producers and consumers a practical means of...

What began as an individual physician medical practice in 1859 in the small rural community of Onaga, Kan., has grown into a regional healthcare system spanning 10,000 square miles in three counties in northeast Kansas. The vision for this regional system was seeded by dedicated doctors, nurses, and...

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. A pine cone has many purposes. It could serve as a home for birds and insects. Pine cones contain seeds to use in...

During his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama outlined a vision for the future that calls on America to “Out innovate, out educate, and out build the rest of the world.” A crucial contributor to this effort, as the President recognized, is rural broadband. USDA is funding...

Islands often have to import many basic necessities and Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, is no exception. That’s why the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Kagman Watershed Project is so important to the island.

Recently, Evans Memorial Hospital in Claxton, Georgia, received $200,000 in Recovery Act loan and grant funds to purchase a state-of-the-art digital mammography system. “This equipment will provide better imaging and allow for more accurate diagnostics,” said Donnie Thomas, acting Georgia Rural...

Jefferson County in Mississippi, a rural county with a population of almost 10,000, was the site of an event last week commemorating a USDA Rural Development Community Facilities grant and loan combination that will bring a modern, state-of-the-art library to that county.