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As the head of USDA’s statistical agency, I know that comprehensive, accurate and timely statistical data are some of the most valuable tools in helping to “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.” The statistics collected and published by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) help tell the...

Originally published in The Detroit News: Today, 306 million Americans have food on their table thanks to a small and noble group of professional gamblers: America’s farmers and ranchers. Only about 1 percent of Americans operate a farm or ranch and these hardworking few not only help provide the...

Earlier this month, USDA Rural Development Area Director Lyndon Nichols, Helen Rush-Lloyd, Constituent Services Director from U.S. Rep. John F. Tierney’s office, and I delivered 80lbs of donations to a local Gloucester, Mass. food pantry named "The Open Door." This food pantry has a slogan "Feeding...

The Warwick USDA Service Center is 100 pound closer to their goal of donating 250 pounds of food to local food banks this summer thanks to a generous donation by Holly Pashnik of Cumberland, RI. In celebration of her ninth birthday, Holly asked her guests to bring non-perishable food items to help...

The Apps for Healthy Kids public voting period concludes this Saturday, August 14, at noon (EDT), and there is no better time than now to add your voice and vote to the competition. To date we have received over 17,000 votes on the apps recently created by the American public in the effort to...

August 5th marked the opening of the Wisconsin State Fair, an event that brings in over 800,000 visitors, and perhaps more impressively, donates 180,000 pounds of food to the Hunger Task Force, a community supported organization that has fed hungry Milwaukeeans for over thirty years. I had the...

Would you leave corporate America to work for a non-profit? Jim Hires did when he became the Executive Director of the Eastern Illinois Foodbank. How did I meet him? We met when I accompanied Illinois Rural Development State Director Colleen Callahan to drop off the state office’s donation to the...

This week, I traveled to Ottawa to meet with Canadian trade group leaders as well as Gerry Ritz, the minister of agriculture in Canada. As part of these meetings, we discussed agricultural trade issues that both of our countries face and opportunities for collaboration. In between meetings, I had...

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. Has the weather and grain prices been on your mind lately? With the release of the August Crop Production report just...

As I have been discussing Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food with producers and local-food advocates across Iowa, one thing has become quite evident: access to capital is a huge barrier. In fact, at a meeting last month to develop an Iowa Food and Farm Plan that will be presented to the state...