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Recently I attended a dedication ceremony along with members of my staff held at the Sussex County Charter School for Technology in the New Jersey community of Sparta. Also in attendance for the dedication were local and school officials as well as Real Estate Advisory Development Services (READS)...

USDA Rural Development State Director Trina George and numerous local officials and leaders were in two Mississippi counties this spring to commemorate Earth Day and highlight USDA’s commitment to good environmental practices. State Director George met with officials of the Tallahala Water...

Secretary Tom Vilsack recently joined a Round Table of regional stakeholders in Nashville to discuss ways that USDA can help rural fuel station owners and cooperatives increase the availability and use of flex-fuels. About eight million cars and trucks on the road in the U.S. today can use E85 fuel...

A large crowd of local officials, library patrons and staff filled the children’s section of the Pittston Memorial Library in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, on a hot May afternoon to hear good news from Senator Robert Casey. Smiles abounded as Senator Casey announced that the library is receiving a...

Tonya Clyde, a single mother of two young children was in the process of a divorce and living in a home owned by her soon to be ex-husband. She needed to find a home for herself, her children, and her 86-year old grandmother. Since she had always been a stay at home mom and never held a job, she was...

To Elizabeth Bonner, the single greatest thing about her new home is the serenity she feels as she sits on her covered back porch, listening to the water as it rolls over the rocks that line the creek bed bordering the back of her property.

Last week USDA Rural Business-Cooperative Programs Administrator Judith Canales crossed Michigan’s Lower Peninsula at a series of events to highlight flex-fuel options and the availability of renewable energy assistance. She addressed the Michigan Business Incubator Association’s conference...

Sixty participants packed into the Cochise County Board of Supervisors Hearing Room in Arizona recently for a three-hour workshop on how to write applications for solar grants. One attendee came in for the event from Mohave County, some 400 miles away.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. There wasn’t supposed to be an agriculture curriculum. There wasn’t supposed to be an instructor. And there definitely wasn’t any money to send seven African-American students from one of the smallest and lowest income towns in Texas to Washington, D.C., to speak with...

South Dakota Rural Development State Director Elsie M. Meeks addressed a crowd of nearly 500 attendees at the 37 th Annual National American Indian Council Convention & Trade Show in Phoenix, Arizona last week. This year’s theme was “Connect to the Past, Commit to the Future.” Meeks, an Oglala Sioux...