Author: Site Owner

When I hear the word drought I imagine dusty rangelands and drying lakes. But it’s hard to imagine tumbleweeds blowing through the Northern Forests of the Midwest and Northeast regions. In fact, these forests have seen overall wetter conditions in recent decades and their annual precipitation is expected to continue increasing with the changing climate.

So why worry about droughts in these northern forests?

Well, it’s not just about how much precipitation arrives in a year, but when the precipitation arrives and in what form. We certainly don’t need to worry about a dust bowl blowing across New England, but there is genuine concern about late-growing season moisture stress increasingly occurring in many species in our northern forests.

There doesn’t have to be an outright drought for moisture-loving trees to feel the pinch if they’re getting less water than they need.

A recent Comprehensive Science Synthesis of Drought Impacts on U.S. Forests details long-term observations of warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, and projects how these climate conditions are anticipated to continue changing throughout the country. An important point in the Northeast and Midwest is that we are getting more rainfall, but more of our precipitation is coming in torrential rain events that don’t necessarily provide moisture at the right time for plants.

It turns out that warmer temps and changing rainfall, not necessarily less rainfall annually, are two key ingredients for drought and moisture stress. More extreme precipitation events, longer duration between events, and shifting seasonality of precipitation will likely increase the frequency of drought occurrences and moisture stress over the next century.

Drought can come in many forms and is projected to occur more frequently as short duration hot droughts. Short duration hot droughts can be forest altering, inducing stress on trees which reduce growth and decrease forest health. Northern forest moisture limitations may favor drought tolerant species such as pines and oaks as time passes; over the next century climate projections describe a shift in tree habitats for many species, which may move northward or to higher elevations.

Although management options for the regions’ forests will vary based on the vulnerability of a particular ecosystem to moisture stress, drought-adaptive strategies can include reducing competition for limited soil moisture, increasing forest species diversity, altering stand density, leaving harvest residues, and favoring species that enjoy dry spells. Climate change may bring new opportunities, but also new risks – these may not alter our decisions, but it never hurts to be informed.

Through its 15 nutrition assistance programs, USDA strives to improve access to safe, healthy food for all Americans. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides aid to child and adult care centers and family or group day care homes for the provision of nutritious foods that contribute to the wellness, healthy growth, and development of young children and the health and wellness of older adults and chronically impaired disabled persons. CACFP administrators and program operators receive support from many advocacy organizations who help ensure children and adults participating in CACFP receive nutritious meals. Below is a story from one of those advocacy organizations, the Child Care Food Program Roundtable.

By Chris Clark, Child Care Food Program Roundtable

In 2015, First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to end childhood obesity, Let’s Move!, celebrated its fifth anniversary. To mark the occasion, she issued the #GimmeFive challenge which encouraged all Americans to do five things to lead a healthier lifestyle. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) community heard this call to action and developed its own CACFP Take ACTION Challenge. That Challenge was launched at the 2015 CCFP Roundtable Conference, where over 500 conference attendees got up, got moving and performed the #GimmeFive Dance!

The Challenge is a yearlong initiative aimed at creating national CACFP awareness, including its collaborative role in quality child care, healthy children, food security and childhood obesity prevention. It recognizes and celebrates CACFP participants’ and professionals’ efforts to get over 1.9 billion CACFP healthy meals and snacks served in family child care homes, centers and after school programs to over 3.8 million children and adults each year.

It consists of five categories, each with a list of corresponding activities. Categories include CACFP Take Action Launch, USDA Resources and Best Practices, Health and Wellness, Educate and Advocate and CACFP Campaigns. Participants select the activities they are interested in undertaking, complete the activities, take a picture and tell their story. At the end of the Challenge—at the 2016 CCFP Roundtable Conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif. – the following awards will be presented: CACFP Gold, Silver, Bronze and Commended.

To date, submissions have been received from child care providers, sponsors, USDA and state agencies in over 35 states. Additional challenge partners are: Child Care Food Program Roundtable; Food Research Action Center (FRAC); Team FNV; Let’s Move! Child Care; T & L Foundation; California Department of Education; National Farm to School Network and USDA. Some fun and creative examples of Challenge submissions received to date include:

• Involving kids in taste testing recipes and creating their own recipe books to take home
• Forming intramural sports teams and exercising together at work
• Getting infants and young kids moving by listening to the Fruit and Veggie Swag collection of songs and videos
• Inspiring others to join the Challenge through friendly competition
• Starting a boot camp style fitness program for friends and colleagues

Building a healthy culture calls for action within and across sectors, because progress in one area will advance progress in another. CACFP, you are doing it! Thank you!

For more wonderful Challenge stories, visit:  www.cacfptakeactionchallenge.org. For details about CACFP, please see: www.fns.usda.gov/cacfp/child-and-adult-care-food-program. To learn more about the Child Care Food Program Roundtable, go to www.ccfproundtable.org.

If you’ve been a member of the American Forests community for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of our partnership with Eddie Bauer. Together, we have planted nearly seven million trees over 21 years. Now, they’re upping the ante on forest restoration through a new campaign that will restore forests on your behalf!

We are partnering with Eddie Bauer, and philanthropic ambassador to our partnership, Ryan Reynolds, to launch the #hug2give campaign!

Today through September 15^th, for every photo posted on Twitter or Instagram of someone hugging a tree and tagging #hug2give, #onetree, @AmericanForests and @EddieBauer, Eddie Bauer will donate $50 to American Forests. To put that in perspective, that’s 50 trees — a half acre of critical wildland habitat being replanted, a city park being created or wildfire-scorched ground being restored — all by you just taking two minutes to post a photo! With a commitment of up to $25,000 in potential donations from Eddie Bauer on your behalf, there are hundreds of acres of essential forests that could be restored.

So, on your next forest adventure take a moment to stop, hug your favorite tree, snap a photo and post it on Twitter or Instagram with the tags #onetree, #hug2give, @Eddie Bauer and @American Forests to have a section of America’s great forests protected and restored on your behalf.

Recently, I had the honor of representing USDA at the annual Federation of Southern Cooperatives and Land Assistance Fund (FSCLA) annual meeting in Epes, Ala. It gave me a chance to speak with a phenomenal group of hardworking farmers and ranchers, to hear their stories and share some of the improvements that USDA, under the Obama Administration, has put in place to help uproot inequality. Over the past eight years, we’ve taken steps to change the culture of USDA to ensure all Americans who come to us for help are treated fairly, with dignity and respect.

As I stepped to the podium and looked out at a crowd of faces that resembled mine, I thought back to my early childhood growing up on my parent’s farm.  I remembered the hardships they endured trying to sustain a life for me and my siblings, and I wished that I could have offered the same information and opportunities to them as I was about to provide to the room full of individuals at the meeting.

The audience of small farmers and ranchers were no different from my parents; they were hardworking people trying to sustain themselves as well as their land and looking for ways to do it. Our mission at the Risk Management Agency (RMA) is to provide resources and educational tools to help farmers and ranchers effectively manage long-term risks and challenges. I stressed to them what I have learned though my years at USDA, and that is to treat your farm as a business, and one way to do that is by making an informed decision to purchase crop insurance and mitigate risk.

I made it my mission to introduce the USDA’s stand on providing crop insurance for beginning farmers of all backgrounds, and risk management solutions that provide a farm safety net that works for them. Conveying the importance of crop insurance and inspiring producers to make educated decisions as far as mitigating their risk is one of the many contributions that I can make for growers who need assistance.

RMA offers various coverage options to organic producers as well as those farmers who have small farms or produce specialty crops. Through efforts such as StrikeForce, we provide support in high-poverty areas in rural America and through policies like Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) we can offer a great option for small to mid-size farmers and ranchers, especially those growing a diversified set of crops and animals. The WFRP program provides a risk management safety net for all commodities on a farm under one insurance policy. This insurance policy is ideal for the types of farms the audience had; and the kind of safety net option farms with specialty or organic commodities, or those marketing to local, regional, farm-identity preserved, specialty, or direct markets have been asking for. And it is available in every county of every state.

The event marked the FSCLA’s 49^th anniversary celebration. A celebration that contributes support toward the federation’s ongoing efforts to promote social and economic equity through cooperative economic development, land retention, and advocacy. It was rewarding to tell the audience how RMA has made efforts to support a diverse farm community, and to ensure the farm safety net we provide works for those across the social and economic spectrum.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

At Fort Valley State University (FVSU) the next generation of leaders in agricultural and life sciences are coming face-to-face with technology that will help them solve the toughest challenges of the future.

“Bioinformatics is ‘biology in silico,’ or ‘digital biology,’ and it is transforming biological research into an informational science,” said Dr. Ramana Gosukonda, associate professor of agricultural sciences at FVSU’s College of Agriculture.

Gosukonda and his team created a bioinformatics curriculum at FVSU where students majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects join with computer science majors to become competent bioinformatics programmers and gain hands-on experiences in writing algorithms and coding for biological problems.  USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is supporting the project with a $150,000 grant from its 1890 Capacity Building program.

Bioinformatics practitioners – bioinformaticians – use computers to store, organize, and analyze the vast amounts of data generated by scientific research.  In other words, they take big data and turn it into practical data that researchers can use to compare existing information with new data.  The capacity, speed, efficiency, and accuracy of bioinformatics are what make biology in silico so exciting for Gosukonda.

“Application of bioinformatics is key to our understanding of diseases and identifying new molecular targets for drug discovery, gene therapy, and economic production of healthy food items,” he said.

Many bioinformatics projects involve examining the genetic diversity of wild plants and animals.  In one such NIFA-funded project researchers at the University of Minnesota used a $459,000 Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant to develop bioinformatics software tools and then used them to study the biodiversity of wild pandas.  This type of research could inform conservation and reintroduction efforts for other endangered species.

“Being strongly intertwined with computer-based approaches, the current state of research underscores the need for bioinformatics education more than ever,” Gosukonda said.  “This curriculum must be offered at the undergraduate level, especially at four-year colleges, where a majority of the students pursue their education.”

Since the grant’s award in September 2015, Gosukonda has created hands-on programming modules and case studies for two bioinformatics courses to enhance students’ knowledge and skills in the subject. The bioinformatics lab is nearing completion and will be stocked with powerful workstations and state-of-the-art education delivery systems.  So far, 20 undergraduate and 30 graduate students are enrolled.

Students aren’t the only ones that benefit from Gosukona’s program, the university does, too.  “The immediate effect is greatly enhanced teaching, research, and educational state-of-the-art technology infrastructure,” he said.  “Further, a value-added program like bioinformatics will help FVSU in its efforts to increase the recruitment, retention and graduation rates of minority students.”

NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education and extension and seeks to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges.

This month USDA is celebrating historic progress over the last eight years to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity for all Americans. Learn more online in The People’s Department: A New Era for Civil Rights at USDA.

By Uma Campbell, Freelance Journalist

Do you love watching home improvement shows on TV? Do you find yourself tackling projects on your own every weekend? If you answered yes to either one of these questions, then you will love these DIY energy saving ideas:

Create a rain barrel.

Have you ever wondered where all the rainwater goes after it falls onto your house? It flows through your gutters and is released into puddles on the side of your house. Instead of letting this water sit unused, create your own rain barrel that can be placed underneath your gutter’s downspout to collect rainwater as it flows. When it’s full, use this water to wash your dog outside or to water your grass. And, of course, another way to reduce stormwater runoff is to plant trees around your home to help absorb the water.

Insulate your water heater tank.

Unless you have a new model, your water heater tank is probably not insulated. All you’ll need is an insulation blanket and a friend to help you hold it in place. First, turn off your water heater and then measure it carefully. Cut the insulation blanket to fit the tank, and then wrap it around, temporarily taping it into place. Once it’s secure, cut out holes where the control panels are, and then tape the blanket permanently in place. This project can reduce standby heat losses by 25 to 45 percent, so you should notice a big difference on your next utility bill.

Seal air leaks.

When you have tiny air leaks around your windows and doors, hot air can make its way into your house during the summer, and cool air can come in during the winter. This forces your heating and cooling system to work harder to maintain a comfortable temperature in your home. To fix this issue, buy a caulking gun and caulk. Clean the area thoroughly, removing any old, cracked caulking that may be left over. Hold the caulking gun at a 45-degree angle and release the caulk while moving the gun smoothly from one side of the door or window to the other. If the caulk does not make it all the way into the crack, use a spoon or other utensil to push it in before it dries. After you have caulked the perimeter of the door or window, clean up any spills and you’re done with this project! Another great way to save on your heating and cooling bills is to plant more trees around your home. Properly placed trees around the home can reduce these costs by up to 30 percent.

Install a window film.

If you have a bigger budget for home improvement projects, you should consider replacing windows with Energy Star models, but if you don’t, then installing a window film is a great alternative. Window films block the heat’s sun from coming into the house so your air conditioner does not have to consume as much energy to cool down the space. Curtains and blinds will also help prevent heat from getting in your home, but you have to have them closed to reap the benefits. With a window film, you don’t have to lose the view from your window to start saving energy.

Not only are these projects a lot of fun, but they also help you protect the environment and save a little money on your utility bills. Talk about a win-win situation

To some people the smell of summer is a fresh cut grass or morning dew, but to me summer is the scent of healthy trees in full bloom.  It reminds me that summer isn’t over yet and there is still time to be outdoors.  And with August as Tree Check Month for the invasive Asian longhorned beetle (ALB), it’s a good time to take a look at your trees to make sure they are beetle free.

Last month, a homeowner on Long Island, N.Y., outside in her own yard, captured an adult beetle.  She visited the website then called the ALB hotline telephone number 1-866-702-9938 to report the beetle.  New York State’s Department of Agriculture and Marketing together with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service responded and collected the beetle, which was ALB.  Six infested trees were found on the property.

In 2008 a Worcester, Mass. resident noticed beetles she had never seen before on her backyard trees.  Curious, she typed out the the insect’s description on an internet search engine.  Somewhat disbelieving when an alert popped up telling her to call federal authorities at her entered description, which she did.  It turned out she had discovered and reported a previously unknown infestation of ALB in Massachusetts.  The beetle was first discovered in 1996 when a Brooklyn, N.Y. resident mistook holes left by ALB chewing their way out of a tree for bullet holes from vandals using his tree for target practice.  He reported the odd occurrence to officials who ultimately realized it was beetles not bullets that caused the damage.

Concerned community residents, noticing something amiss or unusual, have helped efforts to find and get rid of this dangerous pest.  ALB is not native to the United States, and we don’t want it here.  Aside from the potential impacts to industries that rely on the trees that the beetle attacks, there is a danger to residents that weakened, infested trees could drop limbs or cause other problems in the community.  The beetle essentially starves the tree by creating tunneling inside that disrupts the flow of nutrients and from which the tree simply cannot recover.  It is a sad tale for the infested tree but also for any community affected by an ALB infestation.  Finding and stopping beetles before they can impact communities is key.

Please get outside and look for and report any beetles or signs of ALB damage on trees.  You can look for adult beetles, larva in cut or damaged wood, exit holes (a little smaller than a dime), egg sites (smaller than a quarter and look like chew marks), and of course oddly dead or fallen branches.  The sooner beetles and infested trees are found, the sooner we can save other trees from being attacked, and ultimately eliminate the beetle.  Plus, you’ll be outside smelling all the scents of summer while you still can and checking your trees at the same time.

After the first frost the adult ALB die and won’t be seen again until next summer.  But beetles could be developing, and growing, and tunneling inside your trees.  Check now to ensure you won’t see any adult beetles next summer. For more information on ALB, visit our ALB website.

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we hear from Keyna Cisse Diop, the founder of Quali’Volaille, a poultry business in Senegal, West Africa. Passionate about engaging young women in agriculture, Keyna was selected for the prestigious Mandela Washington Fellowship, the flagship program of President Barack Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). After six weeks of courses at Purdue University, she is currently interning with USDA Rural Development in Columbia, South Carolina.

1. When did you become interested in the poultry business of Senegal?

My father has been raising poultry for more than twenty years and is very passionate about livestock production. With my degree in Business Administration, my desire to start my own business in Agriculture and his knowledge of poultry, I came up with the brand Quali’Volaille and we agreed to start producing on a larger scale.

2. Can you describe a typical day for you in Senegal as a young woman entrepreneur in Agriculture?

As a young woman entrepreneur, I always try to set different goals for myself, to either bring more ideas or more success to the table. So I would say there is not a typical day but rather a new day. With my background in Business Administration, I, with the help of our staff on site, follow up on their daily defined tasks while directing the marketing of our products. Sales and after-sales are key aspects of my business. With digital marketing and direct marketing, I reach out to the maximum number of potential customers (business to business, corporate kitchens, households) and stay connected with them to turn them into loyal customers of Quali’Volaille. I also spend enough time doing research, educating myself more about poultry production and agriculture in general.

3. What inspired you to apply for the YALI Mandela Washington Fellowship?

I have been a member of the Young African Leaders Initiative Network and have seen the change that Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni friends have brought to their businesses and communities. This fellowship gives us the right amount of exposure, learning and network we need to grow our startups back home. Being able to share and engage with Africans from 49 different countries and US business people in the same area of interest are exactly the reasons why I applied to this program.

4. What are you learning in your internship and what has been your favorite part?

Being an intern at USDA gives me a broader view of what’s done in the U.S. in terms of agriculture. I work with the Rural Business Cooperative Service on the different programs they have for farmers in rural areas of South Carolina to see who can benefit from those programs and how to implement them.

My favorite part of the experience is one of the visits to a potential USDA program beneficiary, a small scale free range poultry farm. It was really interesting to see their operations, share issues and exchange solutions with them. My short term goal is to start free range poultry back in Senegal, and that visit gave me practical knowledge but also good contacts.

5. Who are your role models?

My role model is my mother. I grew up seeing her go to work and she still goes to work. She is supportive of my choices and empowers me because she believes in women as part of our country’s economic development. I want to be exactly like her when I grow up.

6. What advice do you have for other young Women in Agriculture?

To all the young Women in Agriculture, we are the future. Keep being agents of change and keep empowering your peers. Educate yourselves and educate others. Sharing is caring, and caring is our nature.

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

• Report: EU Policies Put Biodiversity, U.S. Forests at Risk — NRDC
  Some of North America’s most biodiverse ecosystems are being threatened by Europe’s demand for wood pellets. Due to a policy loophole that designates biomass as a carbon neutral energy source, the southeastern United States’ most diverse forests may be converted into plantations.
• Reversing deforestation, restoring landscapes — CIFOR
  Findings from the 2016 Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit address how to restore rainforests while still encouraging economic development in local regions. The countries represented at the summit pledged to restore millions of acres of rainforest by 2020.
• Persistent Drought Kills Millions Of Trees In California Forests — NPR
  As California’s drought persists, temperatures continue to rise and wildfires increase in size and ferocity, teams of scientists are climbing trees to assess the damage. This interview with a biologist in Sequoia National Park discusses the health of California’s forests.
• Logged forests are havens for endangered species in Southeast Asia — UPI.com
  New research reveals that selectively logged forests can still support diverse wildlife. The study in Borneo found just as many animals in the selectively logged forests as in protected old-growth forests, including rare species like cloud leopards and civets.

Trade between nations regularly involves meeting strict government requirements that often create logistical obstacles for all parties involved.  U.S. seed businesses often experience this when doing business with our cousins to the north.  Canada is one of the largest importers of U.S. seed – with tons of seed worth millions of dollars being imported each year.

Thanks to the close partnership between the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), American seed growers and businesses are saving thousands of dollars each year in these cross border transactions.

Prior to 2007, American seed businesses shipping seed into Canada were required to test and label their seed lots to meet federal and state quality testing requirements.  The seed was then transported to Canada where it was immediately retested, to verify quality and grade, before it could enter the Canadian market.  Quality seed testing can take anywhere from four to 21 or more days to complete.  If there is an error or uncertainty during testing, the retest needed could restart the clock.  Meanwhile, valuable seed is waiting in limbo; which costs time and money.

These delays coupled with quality testing costs, contract deadlines, and (most importantly) the hard cutoff Mother Nature gives to farmers for putting the seed into the ground, cause serious migraines for seed dealers and uncontrollable weight loss for their wallets.

To solve this problem, AMS’ Livestock, Poultry, and Seed Program worked with CFIA to implement a program that allows AMS to train American seed analysts to become accredited seed graders for Canada.  After completing the training and passing rigorous knowledge based tests, successful candidates are able to assign a grade name to seed lots scheduled for export to Canada.  These assigned grades allow the seed to enter directly into the Canadian market, without having to be retested.  Voila!  No more duplicate testing, deadline headaches, or diets for the wallet.

AMS offers training and testing for the Canadian Seed Grader program to seed industry professionals on a rolling basis yearly.  AMS also offers a host of other programs aimed at making seed production and domestic and international marketing easier.  These programs and services include process verified program accreditation, training workshops for seed analysts and samplers, variety name clearance searches, trait detection, and a variety of other voluntary quality testing services.

The U.S. seed industry and the international market continue to grow to keep up with feeding the world’s population.  AMS helps to ensure the availability of products that start with seed through the enforcement of laws and management of international programs that promote the interests of the U.S. seed industry.  For more information, visit the AMS Seed Testing and Clearance website.