USDA Blog

This blog is cross posted from Secretary Vilsack's Medium page: Somedays being a Cabinet member, you have to be flexible. Today is one of those days. While in New Orleans to speak to the Renewable Fuel Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, I traveled to the Port of New...

Where there’s fire, there’s smoke. Air quality impacts from wildfires have become significant health events and are now, in fact, the greatest source of air pollution exposure faced by the American public. In addition, as wildfires increase in duration, communities often face multiple weeks of...

Yesterday, the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline joined celebrity chef Ingrid Hoffmann and FDA’s Howard Seltzer to answer Thanksgiving food safety questions via Twitter. With @FoodSafetygov selecting questions from the audience, the panel of experts was able to answer 22 questions in an hour using the...

Every day, USDA employees are hard at work providing safe, nutritious food for our families and children; conserving our land and natural resources; supporting our nation’s farmers and ranchers; expanding market opportunities for American agriculture at home and abroad; and investing in our rural...

In January 2021, day one of the Biden-Harris Administration, the President issued Executive Order 13985 that charged the Federal Government, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with advancing equity for all, and making the necessary changes to ensure underserved communities are properly...

Bi-state sage-grouse, a geographically distinct population of small game bird that lives along the border of Nevada and California, rely on a healthy sagebrush ecosystem. One of the largest habitat threats to the sage-grouse is the encroachment of pinyon and juniper trees. Once pinyon and juniper...

Michigan has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last few years, so it’s always nice to celebrate an occasion when we add jobs to this sector. Earlier this week, USDA Rural Development State Director for Michigan James J. Turner announced two guaranteed loans totaling $7,785,000...

June is Dairy Month. In agricultural circles, the term “Value-Added” often implies a business venture through which an agricultural producer, or group of producers, further process a commodity in the value-chain that leads to the ultimate consumer. But sometimes, the value-added of a value-added...

Despite an unusually wet spring followed by an unusually cool June, America’s corn farmers planted even more than they did last year. U.S. farmers have planted 91.7 million acres of corn in 2019, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). That’s about 69 million football...

Day and night, pollinators are at work all around us—and it's not just honey bees. Did you know that pollinators are responsible for one out of three bites of food we eat? If you'd like to learn more, we've pulled together five blogs from 2015 highlighting some surprising facts about these busy...