usda150

U.S. interest in dependable agricultural statistics can be traced back to the very foundation of our country. George Washington was the first U.S. President to realize the need for reliable answers to questions like: How much grain can the United States export? How much does farmland cost to buy or...

Mississippi staff recently commemorated the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its work on behalf of agriculture, rural America and people throughout the country and world who benefit from the work of the agency. Mississippi agencies USDA Rural Development (RD), National...

The USDA Forest Service, along with our Federal, state and local partners operate the largest wildland fire management program in the world. To help manage these wildland fires the partners have created interagency incident management teams. These teams have responded to many incidents including...

President Abraham Lincoln’s Legacies of USDA, the Morrill Act and the Homestead Act were commemorated on May 20 at the Homestead National Monument of America in Beatrice, Nebraska. More than 225 people attended a special panel presentation in the Education Center, moderated by Dr. Kenneth Winkle...

I had the distinct pleasure of visiting the birthplace of former Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace during a recent trip to Iowa. In fact, my tour of the farm near Orient in south central Iowa happened to be May 15, the day the USDA celebrated its 150 th anniversary. Wallace was Secretary of the...

Nearly 150 years ago – on July 2, 1862, just two months after the creation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture – President Lincoln signed another historic measure, the Morrill Act, which created the land grant university system. Over the years, land grant colleges and universities have had a...

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is celebrating the agency’s 40 th anniversary today. While APHIS’ program activities and responsibilities have grown and evolved since the Agency’s founding in 1972, the mission remains the same: serving the public by protecting the health...

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly seven years since the lives of the citizens of New Orleans and surrounding areas of the Gulf Coast were changed forever in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This epic storm demanded an immediate and unprecedented response. I was proud to be part of USDA’s team that...

Over the coming weeks, the landscape in Oklahoma will change dramatically as state-of-the-art combines comb meticulously through fields of golden wheat, allowing Oklahoma farmers to deliver an estimated 150 million bushels to their local grain elevators. The varieties harvested were exhaustively...

In early May, USDA agency directors appeared before the Pennsylvania Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee. The Committee, chaired by Pennsylvania Senator Elder Vogel, Jr., heard agency heads discuss various USDA programs. Senator Vogel recently introduced a resolution honoring the USDA on...