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For Danny Daniels, tomatoes take first place. He loves growing them so much, they’re the bulk of the produce raised on his Meridian, Miss. farm. The retiree–turned–tomato guru started growing the fruit a few years ago. Tomatoes are finicky, and Daniels saw growing them successfully as a challenge.

Visit www.usda.gov/drought for the latest information regarding USDA’s Drought Disaster response and assistance. Historically hot, dry conditions covered many of the nation’s key agricultural regions during July. Preliminary data provided by the National Weather Service indicated that July rainfall...

Cattle ranchers in the Texas Panhandle are interested in raising more than just cattle and grass. They also want to raise chickens—lesser prairie-chickens, to be exact! The lesser prairie-chicken is a ground-nesting bird native to the mixed-grass prairies of the Texas panhandle, Colorado, Kansas...

Working alongside USDA agencies such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is second nature for the Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community Based Organization. Founded in 1998, the organization is dedicated to assisting limited resource agricultural producers in parts of Texas with...

Visit www.usda.gov/drought for the latest information regarding USDA’s Drought Disaster response and assistance.

This is the seventh installment of the Organic 101 series that explores different aspects of the USDA organic regulations. Annual organic certification fees allow certifiers to carry out their responsibilities. These fees vary according to an operation’s size and other variables. In light of that...

Gopher tortoises are fairly elusive creatures. Usually the only sign you see of them is their burrows or ravaged foliage. But recently a Mobile, Ala., tortoise allowed Marshall Colburn, a Soil Conservation Technician with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a rare, up-close-and...

During the week ending July 24, 2012, the portion of the contiguous United States in drought inched upward to 64%, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The Drought of 2012 continues to hit some of the nation’s most important agricultural regions especially hard, with more than seven-eighths of the...

There’s hot debate over whether or not to conduct prescribed burning and mechanical thinning (the manual removal of trees) in our nation’s forests. Supporters of these fuels reduction methods, which remove highly flammable undergrowth, argue that they help lower the severity of wildfires. Meanwhile...

As a writer and editor for USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Washington, D.C. who relies on a bicycle to get around, I don’t get to four-wheel it very often. But I recently had the opportunity to ride a four-wheeler while visiting a North Carolina farm.