conservation

In today’s market, consumers have high expectations for the products they purchase.  Beyond performance and pricing, consumers like the opportunity to make educated purchasing decisions for their families, and increasingly, decisions that that have an impact. USDA’s new biobased product label will enable consumers to do just that.

Initially, USDA’s Biopreferred program was created by the 2002 Farm Bill and was intended to help increase the purchase and use of biobased products within the Federal government and the commercial market. In 2008, Congress voted to reauthorize the program in an attempt to expand the reach of this successful program and to further promote the sale of biobased products.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) awarded the University of Vermont (UVM) a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) in late 2010 that will help producers improve and reclaim marginal pasture and increase profits.

For many of Vermont’s beginning and experienced livestock farmers, having access to established pastures for grazing is one of the greatest limitations for production. Often land is infested with weeds, without enough forage to support a successful livestock operation.  Producers most commonly control weeds with intensive grazing, mowing, or costly herbicides.

Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe the way I felt on the first day of my internship with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. There was so much to learn—program acronyms, database information, how to do a field check…But I was told by my co-workers that I would learn fast.

And two and a half months and one bottle of Tylenol later, I realized that they were right. I was catching on. Slowly.

On a recent December day, Earl and Clarisse Snell, of Skipperville, Alabama, proudly showed off the summer squash and tomatoes they were still growing at the start of winter thanks to the seasonal high tunnel they built earlier in the year. Also called hoop houses, seasonal high tunnels look a lot like greenhouses but require no artificial energy source—all they need is natural sunlight to grow vegetables, fruits, and other crops.

A new online resource is available to farmers with expiring Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts and beginning farmers interested in obtaining land.

TIP Net is a website sponsored by the USDA Farm Service Agency designed to assist those who are interested in the Transition Incentives Program (TIP). The site serves as a matchmaker to link farmers with expiring CRP contracts to beginning farmers and ranchers who are interested in bringing the land into production.

The Louisiana black bear was once abundant in the Mississippi River Delta. But by the 1950s, the population was severely diminished in Louisiana, mainly due to habitat loss. Luckily, a voluntary land conservation program offered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is helping this threatened subspecies of the American black bear stage a comeback.

The National Agricultural Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) in Madison, Mississippi is partnering with the city of Madison to create a pollinator garden.

Fifteen hardy New Englanders stood in the cold November rain recently to watch the demolition of one of the largest dams ever to be removed in Massachusetts. The crowd was made up of representatives from a diverse group of public and private partners that have been working together toward this day. The removal of the Briggsville Dam in Clarksburg, a small town near the Vermont border, will restore the North Branch of the Hoosic River.

I can’t think of anyone more deserving of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) and North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) Farmer Rancher Pollinator Conservation Award than Paul Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol, California. That’s why I was so excited when I found out he would be receiving the award in 2010!

Camp Binachi is a Boy Scouts of America camp located in rural Lauderdale County, Mississippi, that focuses on teaching scouts about ecology and the conservation of natural resources. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina caused severe damage to Camp Binachi, which is managed by the Choctaw Area Council. But the council was able to get assistance from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to reconstruct the damaged areas.