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USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist’s Climate Change Program Office has released the “U.S. Agriculture and Forestry Greenhouse Gas Inventory: 1990-2008” report. This report provides detailed estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration from the management of livestock, croplands...

Last week I had the opportunity to witness, firsthand, a good example of how rural farm families can overcome the challenges of a changing rural economy and create a promising and sustainable future on the land.

Four more states will be added to the list of project areas under a Farm Service Agency program that encourages producers to establish dedicated energy crops to be used for production of biofuels. Today’s announcement is expected to spark the creation of thousands of new jobs in future production...

Petoskey Plastics, owners of a Blackford County-based plastics recycling and manufacturing facility, completed installation last week of a Meteorological (MET) tower at its Hartford City location. The MET tower will measure wind speed, velocity and direction, as well as provide the first precise...

Today’s White House’s release of the report, Policy Framework for the 21 st Century Grid: Enabling Our Secure Energy Future, provides a path toward modernization of the electric grid and can help make our electric system more efficient by investing in technologies that can transform utility...

Last month, USDA Rural Development in Ohio hosted another event in the “Flexible Fuels Roadshow” aimed at broadening awareness of Secretary Vilsack’s objective of deploying 10,000 flexible fuel pumps into the nation’s motor fuel delivery system by 2015. As part of USDA’s Rural Energy for America...

As a farmer in eastern South Dakota, I witnessed one of the biggest growth periods in renewable energy in our country's history. I saw firsthand how the investments in biofuels benefited rural Americans by creating jobs and capturing wealth locally. Leaders in the community got together, made...

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...

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.