Kathleen Merrigan

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan was invited to address the participants at the American Indian Higher Education Consortium’s 30 th Annual Conference in Bismarck, North Dakota, earlier this week. During the presentation, the Deputy Secretary highlighted the Know Your Farmer, Know Your...

As I talk to farmers across the country, regardless of what they produce or where, they all share one common challenge: how to best move product from the farm to the marketplace. This is especially crucial for small and midsize farmers who may not have enough capital to own their own trucks, their...

USDA employees and members of the public in Columbus, Ohio had the chance to hear Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan speak recently at the Columbus Federal Building as part of her one-day tour of the Buckeye state. Merrigan’s first stop in the morning was at the Hoover plant in...

This morning I had the opportunity to start my day in Big Sky Country where I was invited by Senator Jon Tester to participate in the Small Business Opportunity Workshop hosted at Montana State University. We have a full house here having reached capacity at 150 attendees with another 80 RSVPs still...

On March 3 rd, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan gave an informative speech about USDA’s ‘ Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative to a packed crowd of Portland State University (PSU) students and faculty. As both a PSU graduate student of Public Administration and a new employee...

“The safest bet in America is American agriculture!” That’s the way Secretary Tom Vilsack led off his remarks to the 2,000 farmers, ranchers, agriculture officials and industry leaders in attendance at today’s Agricultural Outlook Forum in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

I recently began the Know your Farmer, Know Your Food College tour, and one of the locations I visited was a farmer’s market in North Carolina. Many of the regionally and locally produced products we see at farmer’s markets have a helping hand from USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant program...

Yesterday, I was honored to represent the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the ‘New Markets, New Jobs’ conference held at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Minnesota is one of our agricultural trade leaders, ranking sixth among all 50 states for U.S. farm exports, generating nearly $8...

Before kicking off this year’s ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ college tour in North Carolina, I took a moment to reflect on why these college visits are so important. As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, we must out-educate the world in order to win the future. Indeed...

In today’s market, consumers have high expectations for the products they purchase. Beyond performance and pricing, consumers like the opportunity to make educated purchasing decisions for their families, and increasingly, decisions that that have an impact. USDA’s new biobased product label will...