Conservation

For basketball great Ralph Sampson, farming is his new game of choice. The new and beginning farmer is looking to resurrect his family’s farm and spur new economic growth on the ancestral land.

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture celebrates Earth Day 2024 with communities across the nation and around the globe, we have an exciting opportunity to highlight the activities, tools and resources of the USDA International Climate Hub.

Each day U.S. farmers and ranchers make thousands of management decisions, ranging from when and what to plant to weighing options for conserving their operation’s natural resources. They depend on an array of experts, research and data to inform these decisions. One of their sources is the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), USDA’s primary private lands conservation agency.

If you follow the #PeoplesGarden on social media, you’ve seen informative videos by Jorge Penso, the lead gardener at the national headquarters People’s Garden in Washington, D.C.

Happy Compromise Farm + Sanctuary grows nutritious food for their local community distributed through a “free farm stand.” Though surrounded by farms in the rural Southern Tier of New York, the area is a food desert with a 16% poverty rate, a condition that often leads to higher risk for chronic health conditions and limited healthcare.

Alcorn State University graduate Christopher Epps learned firsthand how a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) investment in a student’s educational career can have a lifetime impact.

California native Floyd D. Harris III knows that perseverance and hard work pay off. A recent graduate of Southern University, an 1890 land-grant university in Louisiana, Harris applied several times to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/1890 National Scholars Program.

A sustainable and just local food system for Native Americans is the goal of an Arizona nonprofit. The Ajo Center for Sustainable Agriculture (Ajo CSA), a Native American-governed 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is working with the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona to preserve and revitalize traditional O’odham seeds, agriculture, and culture, including dryland farming. The center supports projects including the O’odham Farmer’s Market, business incubator programs, year-round and summer youth agricultural internship programs, and the annual Southwest Native Foodways Gathering.

If you really want your garden to bloom, consider adding high-nutrient compost to your soil. In the People’s Garden at USDA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., we set up a vermicompost system, or a system that uses worms to help with the composting process!

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) worked with Michigan’s Grand Traverse Band (GTB) of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians to remove blockages to natural water flow in streams and rivers through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). USDA invested over $18 million in federal grants and $30 million were raised in local matching funds to replace undersized culverts with timber bridges, the removal of old and failing dams, and the purchase of conservation easements to prevent urban development on farmland – particularly fruit farms.