Blog Archives

Kansas gardening projects and the USDA People’s Garden initiative were featured items during the Rural Rental Housing Association of Kansas (RRHAK) Annual Meeting.  Aimee Omohundro from USDA Rural Development, David Coltrain from Kansas State University Research and Extension, Shari Wilson from the Kansas Association of Conservation and Environmental Education, and Terri Bradshaw from Homestead Affordable Housing discussed how to start a garden, rewards of gardening and how to get the community involved.

President Obama has stressed time and again that the best ideas don't always come from Washington. It is with that spirit that I met this week with a group of agricultural entrepreneurs in Richmond, Virginia to hear their thoughts on the best ways for the federal government to stimulate economic growth and create jobs.

Homeownership Month was truly meaningful to one senior citizen in Grenada, Mississippi who received a new home, thanks to USDA Rural Development’s home loan program and to the pro-activity of State Director Trina George.

Letha Monger lived with her daughter, Betty Spearman, in a small house that built over 50 years ago by her grandfather. Ms. Monger’s home was falling apart, heavily infested with mold and soot, and had become a hazard.

Although raging waters had subsided at Deanna Young’s home in Ponca, Ark., a flood of emotions hit her when she found out USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) would pay 100 percent of the cost of protecting her home from falling into Adds Creek.

One of Mississippi’s largest USDA Rural Development awards was recently celebrated in Lowndes County, where local leaders expect the improvements made by this award to lead to hundreds of jobs.

USDA Rural Development State Director Trina George was joined by U.S. Senator Roger Wicker and numerous state and local officials to commemorate a USDA Rural Development loan of $13 million to the Columbus-Lowndes County Development Link, which will help the entity expand the regional industrial park with a special focus on attracting aerospace industries. This award compliments a previous USDA Rural Development loan-grant combination of $17.5 million awarded last year to expand and improve the water and sewer infrastructure of the industrial park.

Nolan Ryan is one of the greatest icons in Major League Baseball history – a first-ballot Hall of Fame member and team president of the Texas Rangers. But Ryan is special in another way: he heads the Nolan Ryan Guaranteed Tender Beef Program, one of just a few marketing programs verified by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).

AMS relies on university-researched and industry-recognized standards to determine which marketing claims it chooses to verify, and Ryan’s beef has been called “safe at home.” Companies approach AMS to verify marketing claims, such as “guaranteed tender,” to assure their customers that the products are exactly what they claim when listed on packaging. This is an important service to consumers who desire a certain quality of beef and want government, third-party assurance that their beef purchases meet exacting requirements.

Just because a producer works at a smaller operation doesn’t mean he or she can’t sell on a bigger scale. And the size of a farm shouldn’t limit a producer’s ability to feed local foods to local people. But how can such an operation connect the dots to successfully market its products?

One answer lies in a new kind of business model known as food hubs, which are emerging as critical pillars for building stronger regional and local food systems.  A food hub centralizes the business management structure to facilitate the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Nonnative plants have hitchhiked their way into flower beds, gardens, and yards of landowners in the South for decades, invading and often harming forests and other natural areas by pushing out native plants and degrading wildlife habitat. These exotic plants often reduce forest productivity, wildlife diversity, and water quality and quantity.

Bacteria exist everywhere in our environment, and some of them can make us really sick. Illness-causing bacteria exist in or on food, on countertops, kitchen utensils, hands, pets, and in the dirt where food grows. As part of the Food Safe Families campaign, this week’s Check Your Steps blog focuses on cleaning before, during, and after preparing and eating food to keep your family safer from food poisoning.

With assistance from USDA’s Market Access Program (MAP) and working with Food Export-Midwest, a Milwaukee-based company has expanded its access to the Asian market for its brand of specialty cookies. Nikki’s Cookies & Confections has been baking a full line of shortbreads, chocolate layered cookies and holiday specialty products for 25 years. The company’s export success was recently recognized in the National Export Strategy Report, an annual update on the National Export Initiative progress. Under this initiative President Obama set a goal of doubling overall U.S. exports by the end of 2014.