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Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog:

After a cold and snowy month of school closings, the sun shone on February 10, just in time to present eight elementary schools in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with Bronze awards in the HealthierUS School Challenge.

I recently began the Know your Farmer, Know Your Food College tour, and one of the locations I visited was a farmer’s market in North Carolina. Many of the regionally and locally produced products we see at farmer’s markets have a helping hand from USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant program.

Sometimes it’s tough for a small or beginning rural business or cooperative to come up with the money for a feasibility study, marketing or packaging.  That’s where USDA’s Value Added Producer Grant program can help.

Before kicking off this year’s ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ college tour in North Carolina, I took a moment to reflect on why these college visits are so important. As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, we must out-educate the world in order to win the future.  Indeed, during the eight years that I spent as a college professor, I was constantly reminded that investing in our nation’s young minds is investing in our nation’s future. With this in mind, this year, members of USDA leadership will join the Secretary and myself in engaging America’s youth in a critical dialogue about our food system, our rural economy, and the economic opportunities associated with local and regional markets.

Last fall I was honored to participate in the Job Corp’s Top Chef Competition held on at the Department of Agriculture (USDA).  I must say it was one of the most delicious assignments I’ve ever had!  The competition, inspired by Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, was a huge success.  Over 20 Food Service managers from Job Corps centers across the country competed in teams to showcase their culinary talents while applying healthy eating principles to their competition entries.

The Job Corps program is a residential education and training program that serves over 60,000 youth annually between the ages of 16 and 24.  Across 124 Job Corps centers, Food Service staff serves three square meals every day to our students.  Thus, it is critical to ensure our meals meet nutrition and health guidelines and requirements.  More importantly, we understand our role in promoting healthy lifestyle practices to our students, who will then apply what they learned in their independent lives after Job Corps.

Farming isn’t easy.  It’s a seven-days-a-week job that requires a diverse set of skills, long hours, and some luck with the weather.  It’s with this in mind that the National Farm Income Tax Extension Committee recently created RuralTax.org, an online tool that provides agricultural producers with a source for agriculturally related income and self-employment tax information that is both easy to understand and continually updated to reflect changes in tax laws.

The Committee has a 50-plus year history of working with the IRS to edit Publication 225: The Farmer’s Tax Guide. It’s comprised of representatives from more than 12 land-grant universities around the country, who realized the need to partner with USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) to provide more information for farmers about Federal taxes. We at RMA are dedicated to providing useful tools for farmers to access crucial information and are proud to have provided support for the website.

Most people who are interested in local food know that farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) are great ways to buy products from local farms and vendors. But are there other ways that local food moves from producers to consumers? It turns out that a great variety of food supply chains are capable of delivering locally produced foods to consumers. Studying these supply chains offers an interesting peek into the future of local foods in the United States.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently awarded $40 million in Sustainable Community Challenge Grants to help support local planning designed to integrate affordable housing, good jobs and public transportation.  These grants are designed to foster reform and reduce barriers to achieving affordable, economically vital and sustainable communities. The funds will be used by communities, large and small, to address local challenges to integrating transportation and housing.

As part of its approach to community outreach, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) American Samoa office sponsored a week-long effort to catalyze high school students and the public to think about pursuing a career in agriculture.

American Samoa consists of 7 islands and is 77 square miles, an area just slightly larger than Washington, D.C.  Due to the limited land area, traditional farming depends largely on “interspersed” farming of taro planted among banana crops, although local production is diversifying toward modern hydroponic operations.

Since 1915, the Market Reporters of USDA have tracked and reported the markets for agricultural products on a daily basis, both domestically and internationally.  With hundreds of daily reports, Market News provides timely, reliable and unbiased information that helps facilitate the efficient marketing of agricultural commodities and helps to “level the playing field” by ensuring that all market participants have access to the same information at the same time.  The motto of Market News is: “Get it, Get it Right, Get it Out.”

USDA reports markets for fruits and vegetables, livestock and grain, poultry and egg products, dairy, and cotton and tobacco.  Reports cover sales at various levels in the marketplace, movement or shipments of product, and other key market factors such as demand and other impacts on the market at that moment in time.  Market reports issued by USDA are frequently relied upon for value determination in a wide range of applications.  These include price setting at the farm or nearby locations, dispute resolution, insurance settlements, loan appraisal, and as the basis in many contracts.

[Note: the following is an excerpt from an article that originally appeared in the November/December issue of Rural Cooperatives, a magazine published by USDA Rural Development]

Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative has been operating for just over a year, with a roll of 60 voting members in nine contiguous counties, and another 30 associate members.