January 2020

If you’re planning to host friends and family on Super Bowl Sunday, remember that no party is complete without a game plan for leftovers. And a good game plan starts with the end in mind. Strategizing now can help you prevent foodborne illness and reduce food waste later.

Have you ever felt like you reached your breaking point? Known someone who has? Didn’t know where to turn when you needed help?

The more than 2 million farms in the U.S. vary greatly in size and characteristics. For example, annual gross revenue can range from as little as $1,000 to more than $5 million.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is well known for being the gold standard for U.S. agricultural data that can help you in your work. We are proud of our reputation for providing useful, accurate data in service to U.S. agriculture for more than 150 years. When extension agents or farm associations write grants to advance agricultural research, they turn to NASS data. When farmers and ranchers want to compare their operation to others or gather unbiased information for marketing decisions, they can turn to NASS data. And when local governments and ag associations are looking to tout the importance of agriculture in their county or state, they turn to NASS data.

The rules of a football game are clear, but many don’t know game-day food safety rules. Help your guests stay healthy by tackling offensive bacteria that could be in possession of your food. Be ready to intercept foodborne illness and protect the serving line with a defense of food safety tips.

Agriculture continues to be Mississippi’s top industry for revenue generated in the Magnolia State. Poultry is Mississippi’s largest agricultural commodity, leading as the most valuable livestock product including eggs-layers with sales valued at $3.1 billion. The 2017 Census of Agriculture showed that producers raised and sold $6.2 billion in crops and livestock.

Farmers throughout history have taken advantage of off-season plant growth to enhance their next year’s crops. These plants, called cover crops, are beneficial in many ways, including protection against weed infestation and soil erosion, as well as feed for farm animals. Some farmers use cover crops in no-till farming systems. However, when cover crops are incorporated into the soil, they become a fertility-enhancing mulch – what some call “green manure.”

Imagine building a broadband network where there are no roads to move supplies, or electrical grids to power cellular towers. Yakutat is an isolated community of about 650 tucked into a sheltered bay off the Gulf of Alaska, disconnected from the road system, and hundreds of miles from Alaska population centers. Like many remote Alaskan villages, most residents in Yakutat adopt a subsistence form of living, depending heavily off the land and sea to survive. For Yakutat, which has a substantial Alaska Native population and struggles with a fifteen percent poverty rate, modern conveniences like fast internet are unavailable.

Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones have caused devastating damage to nearly all of the American-Affiliated islands during the past few years. In 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Just a year later, Typhoons Yutu and Mangkhut hit Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, and then in 2019, Cyclone Gita impacted American Samoa.

Families are the cornerstone of agriculture in Alabama (PDF, 947 KB) where 97% of farms counted in the recent 2017 Census of Agriculture are family owned. Although the number of farms in Alabama decreased 6% from 2012, the average size of farms increased 3%, mirroring a trend seen in states across the nation. With 73% of farms connected to the Internet, Alabama farms and ranches continue to reach others across the globe.