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From the west coast to New England, rural communities across the country are implementing community food systems’ strategies. The projects are bringing more local food into school meals, promoting healthy eating habits and expanding markets for American farmers and producers.

The USDA Farm to School Grant Program is proud to support these efforts. Over the past four years, approximately four out of ten schools impacted by the program are in rural communities. We look forward to supporting similar projects in the future and are currently accepting applications for Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 funding. Visit our grant opportunities page for more information.

To celebrate the release of the FY 2017 RFA, we are highlighting two projects that are having a big impact in their communities.

Supporting Farm to School in Southwest Colorado

Mancos Conservation District’s Montezuma School to Farm Project provides hands-on experiences for students through integrated school garden classes, nutrition education, farm field trips, youth farmers markets, and summer farm camps. Additionally, their collaborations help facilitate regional product aggregation and distribution, connecting regional producers and schools. The project works primarily in Montezuma County and partners with organizations that serve La Plata County, both of which are in rural Southwestern Colorado. And with the help of a FY 2016 USDA Farm to School Grant, the team established a production farm and greenhouse on the site of Cortez Middle School in Cortez. The team also established a heritage apple orchard, expected to produce over 50,000 pounds of fruit annually!

And these efforts are having a big impact – in 2015, the program logged more than 26,000 student education hours reaching 2,000 students and producing more than 4,000 pounds of produce. Key to the success of these efforts is continued support from school leadership. The Cortez Public Schools’ superintendent believes that these projects “increase [their] capacity to engage students and provide them with healthy, nutritious foods that enable them to be at their best to learn throughout the day.”

From Ag Literacy to Local on the Tray in Central Maine

RSU-18 School District serves five towns: Belgrade, China, Oakland, Sidney and Rome. Over 10 years ago, a group of staff members had the idea to collaborate across departments to teach their children where their food was coming from. With mini grants from Maine Ag in the Classroom and the Read “ME” agricultural literacy program, teachers and staff engaged students in conversations about how food was grown. A few years later, high school students began a movement to get more fresh, unprocessed foods served in the cafeteria. With the seeds planted, and the desire for more robust programming, RSU-18 applied for and received a USDA Farm to School Planning Grant in FY 2015.

The Let’s Go Farm to School to RSU-18 project now boasts a 15-member advisory group, charged with implementing a three C’s approach to building healthy habits, integrating farm to school principals within the classroom, cafeteria and community. Lessons about food, agriculture and nutrition have been integrated into the curriculum, and piloted in every grade. Farmers and others in the local agricultural industry visited each classroom, and students put their instruction to the test in raised bed gardens. Menu updates incorporated local milk, blueberries, and potatoes, with the goal of working towards 25-50 percent of food served through RSU-18’s Child Nutrition Programs coming from a local source.

Let’s Celebrate

As in Maine and Colorado, rural communities across the country have the power to build a generation of healthy eaters and stimulate local economies. To read more about USDA’s investments in rural America and its successful turnaround, visit USDA’s latest entry on Medium.com, Rural America Is Back in Business.

When it comes to purchasing eggs, consumers have interests that go well beyond what they see in the carton.  For many buyers, where that egg came from and how it was produced are just as important as the finished product.  Organic, locally produced, cage-free, and free range are just a few of the marketing claims consumers will find on the carton, as producers try to communicate the attributes of their product.  To provide additional assurance to their customers of the validity of marketing claims, shell egg producers often enlist the services of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).

In recent months, a long list of large volume food buyers – including restaurants, grocers, distributors and more – have announced they will transition to sourcing eggs and egg products only from cage-free production systems.  You can learn more about this trend in a recent USDA Blog post.  Many shell egg suppliers have already found a way to assure customers that products marketed as cage-free are indeed sourced from such systems: when USDA Graded eggs are also identified as cage-free, they must undergo a review process to verify the claim is truthful.

Through its Livestock, Poultry, and Seed Program, AMS provides shell egg quality grading and certification services to businesses on a voluntary, fee-for-service basis.  Egg cartons bearing the USDA Grade Shield – usually either “USDA Grade AA” or “USDA Grade A” – must meet strict U.S. quality standards.  In addition to verifying that eggs meet the stated grade, USDA’s highly-trained graders inspect processing facilities for proper sanitation and refrigeration, and verify proper identification and traceability methods such as code dating and plant numbers.  Further, packaging materials that bear a USDA Grade Shield must be pre-approved by USDA to ensure the labeling is truthful and not misleading.  This includes claims regarding the method of production (cage-free, free range, etc.), making the USDA Grade Shield a symbol of quality and integrity.

Not all USDA graded eggs are cage-free, and not all cage-free eggs are graded by USDA.  But, eggs packed under a USDA Grade Shield and marketed as cage-free – or with any other production claim – must be source-verified by USDA through onsite farm visits, at least twice annually, to check that the laying hens are housed in the appropriate production system.  For AMS approval, cage-free eggs must be produced by hens housed in a way that allows for not only unlimited access to food and water, but, unlike eggs from caged hens, also provides them the freedom to roam during the laying cycle.

We also know some consumers prefer their eggs to come from “free range” hens.  For those eggs, we verify they are produced by hens that are not only housed in a way that allows for unlimited access to food and water and provides the freedom to roam within the area like cage-free hens but also gives the hens continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle.

At the processing facility, it’s not uncommon for cage-free eggs to be received alongside literally millions of non-cage-free eggs.  So, AMS requires a written and implemented segregation and traceability plan detailing how the company maintains the identity of the eggs from production through storage, transport, processing, and packaging.  Then, during packing, AMS verifies that only eggs sourced from the appropriate flocks are packaged into cartons bearing a USDA Grade Shield.

Whether you are an agricultural business wanting to differentiate your product in the marketplace or a consumer looking for quality eggs, AMS grading and certification services ensure that quality and marketing claims are verified from farm to table.

Incidents described as “thousand year storms and floods” and “the worst U.S. disaster since Hurricane Sandy” claimed the lives of more than 58 people in Louisiana, West Virginia and South Carolina over the last year.  These disasters often remind us of the devastating impacts that families and their communities face after they strike.

After emergency life saving operations, food and shelter assistance are the most important priorities with which emergency managers must contend.  It was during these times that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) responded to 22 incidents by providing needed nutrition assistance.  More than half of these disasters involved severe and widespread flooding, including the most recent floods that affected residents in 22 parishes in and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

So far, USDA has issued over $60.2 million in Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP) benefits to more than 286,000 survivors of the August flooding in Louisiana and over $19.6 million in replacement benefits to 254,000 SNAP recipients who lost food because of the flooding.

During any disaster, FNS works with its disaster feeding partners so that survivors will have access to food.  I had the chance to meet some of these survivors and hear their stories, not only of what it was like to live through the floods, but also how they were able to recover from the devastation as well as provide food for their families using USDA’s disaster nutrition assistance programs.

Gbenga Bello lived in Baton Rouge for 30 years and never had been affected by a disaster, until the flooding in Louisiana last month.  As the D-SNAP Site Supervisor in West Feliciana Parish, Gbenga has been assisting those in need for many years, and now he finds himself to be one of those in need of food assistance. “It was a humbling experience…but life goes on; we will get through this and keep moving forward.”

Glenn LaBlanc, a D-SNAP recipient in St. Gabriel Parish, La. who was evacuated from her flooded trailer home, said that it has been a “wonderful blessing to get assistance from the good people in the government, helping those in need, coming together in a desperate time such as now.”

In October 2015, during the South Carolina flooding that would go down as one of the most prolific rainfall events in modern history, Katherine Walsh sat in her living room with her twin, three-year old sons.  As water rushed through their front door, she grabbed her kids “…and prayed that the water didn’t come any higher.”  After five days of constant storms, some areas received nearly 27 inches of rainfall, a record high for the state. Nineteen died, hundreds were forced from their homes, while many others lost their cars or were unable to work.

D-SNAP is one of the primary nutrition assistance programs that USDA FNS can provide to those most severely impacted by disasters and who are in need of short-term food assistance.

Spencer Kennedy recounted being at home in his trailer in Charleston, SC, with his children who thought the rising water was “fun” at first. They quickly changed their minds once the walls of their trailer home began to buckle and their home started sinking into the oversaturated ground.  Then, reports of alligators in the water began to spread.

As a Disaster Response Coordinator for FNS, I’m proud to be a part of an agency that can provide food assistance to disaster survivors, even if it’s only a small part of the response efforts.  USDA works with federal, state, local and voluntary agency partners, such as FEMA, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, who are the “boots on the ground.” Through them, USDA Foods are distributed to disaster survivors at mass feeding shelters, or, in some cases, for household distribution. Through these partnerships, USDA ensures that families receive the food they need, as many retail grocery stores could be closed soon after a large disaster.

Once stores re-open and an impacted area has received a Presidential Disaster Declaration for Individual Assistance, a state agency might decide to request to operate a D-SNAP if food assistance is still needed. USDA FNS works closely with the state to approve a D-SNAP to start serving survivors who are most in need.  Katherine and Spencer were survivors who don’t qualify for regular SNAP benefits, but they needed short-term emergency help to feed their families because of disaster-related expenses.

At the D-SNAP site in Charleston, SC, lines of people wrapped around the Convention Center waiting to apply for benefits.   While it had been a full month since the excessive rainfall, families still sought assistance and hoped to find a little relief.  A young mother approached me with tears in her eyes saying, “thank you a million times over for being here for the people of South Carolina.”  Gratitude radiated through her and other survivors who received benefits that day.

I feel privileged and proud to work for an agency that can support a community get back on its feet, and help alleviate the stress that follows a disaster.  Thanks to the readiness of our federal, state, tribal, faith-based and non-governmental partners, we are able to uplift communities and help them emerge stronger when disasters strike.

Because September is National Preparedness Month and after working with our partners on these disasters, it is a good time to think about emergency planning.  Don’t Wait. Communicate. Make an Emergency Communication Plan for you and your family because you just don’t know when disasters will impact your community.

If you are in need of food for your family following a disaster, contact the disaster relief organization in your area to determine where you can find food assistance. For more information on FNS’ disaster nutrition assistance programs, visit www.fns.usda.gov/disasters.

Wetlands and wildlife – they’re made for each other. Wetlands provide critical habitat, shelter food and places to raise young.

Landowners across the country are voluntarily restoring and protecting wetlands on private lands. This not only provides high-value wildlife habitat but provides many other benefits, such as cleaner water (wetlands act as filters!) and reduced flooding risk (they store water!).

When wildlife take up residence on your land, it is nature’s way of telling you that all is well. This is definitely the case for landowners Jim and Lyn Des Marais, who are now working to restore a 500-acre wetland in Vermont.

The couple took advantage of the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, a Farm Bill conservation program that enables landowners to rehabilitate and protect wetland areas. The Des Marais property was once farmed, and the natural hydrology of the land was changed by ditches.

As part of restoring the wetland, the duo is plugging ditches, enabling water to flow again naturally throughout the wetland. In addition, they will create depressions in the landscape to enhance habitat for migratory waterfowl, shorebirds and amphibians.

The Des Marais wetland is ideal for birds because the farm offers a variety of habitats, including hay and grasslands, and as a result, the diversity of the birds is extensive. The wetland is home to ducks, rails, herons, bald eagles, peregrine falcon and other woodland hawks. They have also spotted bobolinks, meadowlarks, golden-winged warblers, blue herons, bald eagles, kingfishers and swallows.

Another winged species – the endangered Indiana bat – also depends on this Vermont wetland for survival. There’s a bat roost on neighboring property, and wetlands – like this one – provide fresh water and attract the insects they eat.

Landowners like the Des Marais’ are stepping up around the country to restore and protect wildlife. The work of private landowners is largely credited with the recovery of the Oregon chub. This small minnow was the first fish in the history of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to be removed from the list of threatened and endangered list because of recovery. The fish greatly benefited from Oregon landowners who restored back channel wetlands in the Willamette River basin.

Similarly, the Amargosa toad rebounded when the citizens of Oasis Valley, Nevada came together to restore and protect riparian habitat along the Amargosa River. This toad is found in only one county in the world, limited to a 20-mile stretch along the river. In 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined protections under the ESA weren’t needed because of the toad’s improvements on private lands.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides technical and financial assistance to help landowners plan and implement conservation practices that restore and protect wetlands. Over the past 24 years, landowners have protected nearly 2.7 million acres of wetlands through 14,500 easements with the help of NRCS.

Water, including wetland habitats, gives wildlife. We salute the Des Marais family of Vermont, and the thousands of other private landowners who voluntarily take actions every day to protect, restore and enhance wetlands and wildlife habitat.

As a young boy in eastern Kenya, Peter Mumo faced a life of poverty, hunger and illness. That is until he started receiving school meals at the age of nine through the USDA McGovern–Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. After that, his life turned around. He started to gain weight, his health improved and he began doing well in school.

And now, at age 28, he is in Des Moines, Iowa, to take part in a six-week business and entrepreneurship training program hosted by Drake University as part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship. The Fellowship is the flagship program of the Obama Administration’s Young African Leaders Initiative that empowers young people through academic coursework, leadership training and networking.

On his way to Des Moines, Mumo stopped off in Washington to tell his story and to thank the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the support he received through the McGovern-Dole Program.

“When I was in need someone stepped up and made a significant difference not just for me, but for my entire community. I never dreamed I’d be in a position to help others one day,” Mumo says.

Through the McGovern-Dole Program, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) and partners including non-profit charitable organizations, cooperatives and the United Nations World Food Program, work to reduce hunger and improve literacy and primary education, especially for girls. By providing school meals, teacher training and related support, McGovern-Dole projects help boost school enrollment and academic performance.

Mumo said he was impressed by how the McGovern-Dole Program helped all of his classmates.

“Not just the boys benefitted, but the girls, too,” Mumo said. “Healthy and educated girls help not just their families, but the entire country.”

“He’s a great spokesman for the McGovern-Dole Program,” said Amy Harding, Deputy Director of the FAS Food Assistance Division. “It’s wonderful to have someone whose life was changed by the program come here and tell his story.”

After he started receiving McGovern-Dole school meals, Mumo’s grades improved along with his health. He went on to get an engineering degree from Moi University in Kenya. He helped design programs to improve water harvesting and storage systems for farmers and developed a support service connecting farmers across Kenya to improve agricultural productivity. Currently he is developing a web-based application to help farmers use the service.

“I was in need and someone came in and made a difference for me and my entire community,” Mumo said. “Now I’m in a position to help others one day.”

The McGovern-Dole Program is a key component of President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative and has helped feed more than 28 million children to date. Currently, FAS funds 37 active McGovern-Dole agreements with 16 cooperating sponsors in 26 countries, assisting more than five million beneficiaries.

As we approach the 15^th anniversary of September 11^th, 2001 or 9/11, our thoughts return to that day and many of us will revisit public spaces designed to promote healing and emotional recovery from the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. The memories of the victims are cemented in our minds and hearts. They were employees, friends, family members, and American and world citizens that touched us all through their stories that we’ve seen in memorials, through media, and personal experience.

The healing power of nature is recognized around the world, including by those who create living memorials.  Living memorials can be plantings in a special location, development of beautiful gardens, or enhancements to existing landscapes like a beachfront.

Following 9/11, the Forest Service documented hundreds of community-based living memorials. We recently revisited 35 of them in the New York City metropolitan area. Revisiting sites that sprang up immediately after 9/11 was an opportunity to chart the role of landscapes of resilience in community recovery from disaster. We were particularly struck by those that played a role in ecological as well as emotional recovery.

Many of the memorials retain their focus on 9/11. A few had even broadened their purpose to include healing from disasters that have happened since 9/11, including other international tragedy.  For example, the Sterling Forest Arrow Lake Memorial in Tuxedo, NY grew from earlier efforts in the 1990s, when health professionals began prescribing experiences in Sterling Forest to support patients’ recovery from emotional and physical trauma. Following 9/11, the forest hosted families from the Fire Department of New York whose loved ones died at the World Trade Center. In a subsequent commemorative tree planting event, the families were joined by children from Sierra Leone who had survived violence in their own country.

9/11 remains a poignant memory in the American psyche. Living memorials like the Arrow Lake memorial will continue to play an important role in our recovery.

A vibrant and healthy agriculture sector is a critical component of restoring and improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay, and I’m proud of the steps that our Bay-area agricultural producers are taking to protect this national treasure. Agricultural producers have implemented nearly $1 billion worth of conservation practices on 3.6 million acres – an area three times the size of Delaware – since 2009 with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

From coastal communities in Virginia and Maryland to the hills of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, farmers and forest landowners are voluntarily making conservation improvements to their land that reduce erosion, manage nutrients and protect stream corridors – all contributing to cleaner water downstream. We celebrated the accomplishments of producers today at Y Worry Farm in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, bringing together producers, agricultural groups, non-government organizations and others to celebrate these investments in cleaner water.

At the farm, we met Mark Scible and his family who use no-till, precision farming and other conservation practices that send cleaner water to the Patuxent River, one of the many tributaries of the nation’s largest estuary.

Historically, the Bay has suffered from high amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution, impacting wildlife, fishing, recreation and water quality, and farmers like Scible are working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to improve its quality.

NRCS staff work side-by-side with producers to plan and implement conservation systems customized to each farm and working forest. From planting cover crops to establishing buffers along waterways, these conservation practices contribute to cleaner water downstream and many other benefits.

From this work, based on 2006-2011 data, average edge-of-field sediment loss has decreased by 15.1 million tons per year, which is enough soil to fill 150,000 train cars, stretching 1,704 miles or a distance further than from Washington D.C. to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And producers have installed nearly 3,500 miles of fences and riparian buffers — enough to span from Annapolis, Maryland, to San Francisco, California, and then north to Seattle, Washington.

Much of this work is targeted in priority watersheds, where water quality is poorest and conservation can make the biggest difference. NRCS has a goal of putting conservation systems on 4 million acres in these watersheds by 2025, and since 2010, farmers have already put conservation on 1.6 million acres – 41 percent of the goal.

That’s a lot of conservation in just seven-plus years. But our work isn’t done. USDA has continued to provide assistance to producers to enlarge the conservation footprint. USDA has also enlisted the help of many conservation partners and provided tools like the Regional Conservation Partnership Program and Conservation Innovation Grants program to bring new ideas and resources to the table.

This investment on Bay-area farms is part of a larger effort by the Obama Administration to improve the health of this vital watershed. In 2009, President Obama charged government agencies to work focus resources and to find innovative solutions to improve the health of the Bay, and USDA took that call to action seriously.

We’re pleased to see the signs of a healthier Bay around us, from grasses on the sea floor to more abundant fish and wildlife, and to ultimately cleaner water.

Independent reports show positive trends. Underwater grasses, which provide critical food and shelter to wildlife, are thriving. The blue crab, an indicator of the Bay’s health, has seen population spikes. And stations that measure water quality are showing improvements in many creeks and rivers that flow to the Bay.

We know more needs to be done. And while there is no short-term solution for the complex and multi-decadal water quality issues in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, all sectors working together can deliver valuable solutions. Science shows that voluntary agricultural conservation is measurably reducing the runoff of nutrients and sediment into waterways. But solutions will take time.

NRCS and its partners have worked with farmers in the Bay region for more than 80 years. Agriculture is doing its part. Public-private partnerships and close collaboration with State governments to support voluntary agriculture conservation efforts is key to success by cooperating on achieving clean water goals.

To conclude, NRCS is committed to helping agriculture continue its contribution to improving water quality in the watershed while remaining a strong and vibrant economic engine for the region.

To learn more about USDA’s investments in the Bay, download our new report, Agricultural Lands – Key to a Healthy Bay, or visit nrcs.usda.gov/chesapeake.

Find out the latest in forest news in this week’s Forest Digest!

• We’ve wiped out 10% of Earth’s wilderness in the last two decades — Vox.com
  A recent study published in Current Biology reveals that, since the early 1990s, the planet has lost roughly 10 percent of its wilderness, which is equal to a land area two times the size of Alaska.
• An Army of Beetles Could Save Dying Hemlock Forests — Scientific American Forests
  In attempts to combat the destructive woolly adelgid devastating our eastern hemlocks, researchers are testing the implementation of predator beetles, Laricobius nigrinus, which could potentially kill the adelgids.
• Thrive or fail: Examining forest resilience in the face of fires — Science Daily
  After suffering devastation to nearly 1 million acres in 1988 due to fire, Yellowstone National Park has spent the last three decades embarking on recovery, which could be the result of adapting species creating a more resilient ecosystem.
• U.S. forests are so full of dead trees that some scientists want to burn them instead of coal — Washington Post
  A professor at the University of Wyoming is researching how we can burn dead trees, devastated by infestations of bark beetles and drought, in our western forests for energy.