USDA Blog

USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is the gold standard in providing timely, accurate and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture. But beyond the hundreds of surveys the agency conducts each year on behalf of U.S. ag, NASS has been helping to establish and improve...

School lunch sometimes gets a bad rap. But I am here to tell you that school lunch is amazing and looks a lot different than what you may remember if you’re a kid of the 90s, like me.

USDA has a proven track record of protecting U.S. farmers and has many safeguards in place to prevent the introduction of foreign animal diseases.

McClellanville County is a rural community in South Carolina, and like many communities across rural America, access to high-speed internet presents real barriers. Families like Lindsay’s struggled to stay connected in the digital age. “When the kids came home from school and I was working, no one...

On August 14-19, my leadership team and I traveled to Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianna Islands (CNMI) to meet with the territories’ leadership, Superintendents and Commissioners, that administer USDA food assistance programs. We discussed the challenges of transitioning back to pre...

African swine fever (ASF) has existed for more than a century. ASF is a highly contagious, deadly disease affecting both domestic and feral pigs, devastating pork industries around the globe. ASF was first described in 1921 in Kenya. In the decades that followed, it spread in several sub-Saharan...

Like many of our USDA colleagues across the country, federal staff from the Food and Nutrition Service were glued in last week to the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. Many attended in-person to contribute ideas and host the event alongside White House staff, and hundreds more...

This month, I had the opportunity to travel to New Paltz, New York and visit with Peter Ferrante of Wallkill View Farm. Mr. Ferrante received funding through USDA Rural Development’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) to install a solar array on the rooftop of his farmers market in the Hudson...

Access to high-quality water will be a defining feature of the 21 st century. Record heat waves and drought are not only leading to more frequent and intense wildfires but are also putting one of life’s most valuable resources at risk: the water we drink.

Cooperatives are a vital pillar of the U.S. economy and contribute essential goods and services to rural America. Many communities rely on cooperatives to provide locally grown food, housing, electricity, financial services, internet, retail services, and so much more.