National Institute of Food and Agriculture

As 2019 comes to a close and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) celebrates our tenth year (see this USDA blog for more on NIFA’s history), we reflect on our successes of agricultural research, education, and Extension (also referred to as the Cooperative Extension System) and our...

Good things come in small packages. Sadly, so do bad things. That’s where Iowa State University’s (ISU) Department of Mechanical Engineering comes in.

On October 1, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) celebrated our tenth anniversary. Ten years ago, we replaced the former Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service when Congress established NIFA through the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Pub. L. No...

Strolling down the aisles of most toy departments, parents are likely to see more diverse options such as a brown-faced doll holding her microscope and African-American action figures in engineering sets. Many toy manufacturers have removed the stigma of “traditional gender roles” and created...

The digital divide between population centers and rural America is a fact of life. For some, it’s simply a lack of cell phone coverage; for others, it signals a lack of education for their children.

A major war was fought in 2014-2015, with more than 200 battlefields and millions casualties in the United States alone. You may not have seen much of it on the news, but there’s a good chance your wallet felt it.

Purple corn is more than tasty and eye-catching. Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered a game-changing element of purple corn – it may help reduce the risk of major health diseases.

Wildfires blackened nearly 8.8 million acres in the United States last year, highlighted in the news by California’s Camp Fire, the deadliest in that state’s history.

Researchers have been working for well over a decade to enhance the health of pollinators and now beekeepers, citizen scientists, and anyone interested in pollinator health can join in using a new online tool, Beescape.

Military-connected youth have an exciting opportunity to join other members of the military family this summer. These residential and day camps will develop skills and teach the campers new techniques that will help prepare them to be productive citizens.