Farm Service Agency (FSA) acting Administrator Bruce Nelson praised Director of Contracting Activity Designee Joyce Bowie recently for her career work that earned her the distinguished USDA Champion Award at the Small Business and AbilityOne Award ceremony held at USDA.  A member of the FSA Acquisition Management Division, Bowie was honored for effectively educating her internal customers about small business contractors and promoting the use of their services. Read more (USDA blog).

Emergency grazing for land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program has been approved for eight Colorado counties. "This authorization provides relief for many Colorado livestock producers who have suffered through severe drought conditions," said Trudy Kareus, FSA state executive director. "The drought has depleted hay supplies and affected the growth of hay and pasture in parts of Colorado. Many livestock producers cannot maintain their current herds without implementation of CRP emergency grazing." The emergency grazing will be allowed through Sept. 30, 2011. Learn more.

Texas cotton farmers may opt to make crop insurance claims rather than harvest cotton as the worst drought in more than a century continues to plague the state. “This year will probably rank among the top abandonments,” said John Robinson, a professor and extension economist at Texas A&M University in College Station. “The situation looks very grave.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared the entire state of Texas as a primary natural disaster area this week due drought and wildfires. Read more (Bloomberg) or review the natural disaster declaration.

U.S. farmers planted 92.3 million acres of corn in 2011, up 4.6 percent from last year, according to report released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Driven by higher commodity prices, U.S. corn growers increased planted acreage by 4.1 million acres from last year. This is the third consecutive year of increased corn acreage and is the second-largest corn acreage in more than 60 years. Learn more.

Weather around the country may prove difficult for producers as flooding in the northern plains and upper Midwest is expected to continue throughout the summer, according to USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey. While favorable conditions are expected in parts of the northwest, drought conditions will continue to plague the southwest along with wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico.

The People's Garden at USDA Headquarters in Washington, DC. was the location of the 5th Annual Pollinator Celebration. Various activities and exhibits on bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles highlighted the work of USDA agencies and federal partners.

One of the exhibits "Celebrating 25 Years of the Conservation Reserve Program", featured FSA's Zip the Bee who was there to help spread the word about the benefits of the Conservation Reserve Program and its new CP42 practice.

Zip is well known on the FSA Kids page as the tour guide in the popular AgVenture Game which can be played online. Zip proved to be very popular with the visitors and many stopped by to have a photo taken, and receive valuable information about the benefits of the CRP program. 

• CRP is a popular, voluntary program that has a long history of providing soil, water, and wildlife benefits on fragile and marginal cropland.
• CRP has a variety of options to help farmers plant diverse wildflower habitats pollinators need.
• Ongoing studies are documenting how landscapes with CRP help support healthy populations of economically important honeybees.
• FSA has a new CRP practice called CP42, designed to create even better pollinator habitat.

FSA employees Susan Proper and Mary Helen Askins took turns playing the part of Zip, while Jim Michaels, Bridgette Collins and Cynthia Berringer provided information about the CRP program.

Here in this video Zip waves at visitors who passed by the exhibit.

 
India's agriculture representatives visited the colorful greenhouses on their tour of the Barber’s farm in upstate New York. Pictured from l to r: Nitin Srivastava, Cindy Barber, Surabhi Mittal, Tom Della Rocco,  Shuchi Mathur, James Barber and Hema Yadav.

New York Farm Service Agency representatives, aiming to improve international relationships, participated in a program designed to develop new markets, promote food security and enhance marketing potential.

FSA State Executive Director James Barber and County Executive Director Thomas Della Rocco took part in the International Visitor Leadership Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, where they hosted four leaders of India’s agricultural sector.

“This was a great opportunity to establish and grow a mutually beneficial, cross-cultural relationship with our peers in India,” said Barber. “The experience brought to light some intriguing differences in agricultural practice and philosophy. Awareness of these differences will help foster future development of agricultural exchange between our countries.”

Continue reading "New York FSA Hosts India Ag Reps to Enhance Intern'l Relations" »

Four more states will be added to the list of project areas under a Farm Service Agency program that encourages producers to establish unconventional crops to be used for biofuels.

Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania were selected as part of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program that will provide financial incentives to eligible agriculture producers to grow giant miscanthus — a sterile, hybrid warm-season grass that is cultivated through the planting of rhizomes in open fields.

“This represents another step in agriculture’s contribution to the President’s energy goals to establish commercial-scale dedicated energy crops,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Continue reading "More States to Participate in Biomass Production Program" »

Persistence and an FSA loan helped Matt Hartwig realize his dream of becoming a dairy farmer. “I never really wanted to do anything else but be a dairy farmer,” said Hartwig. But obtaining funding to purchase an operation or buy farmland seemed impossible for a 20-something who grew up on a farm in Minnesota. With dairying a distant dream, Hartwig decided to take up veterinary medicine, earning a degree in dairy science management and later interning on a dairy farm in Oregon. He continued to save his money and when the opportunity came, he dipped into his $60,000 nest egg and qualified for an FSA beginning farmer loan to make his dream a reality. Read more (Agriculture.com).

The nomination period for local Farm Service Agency county committees is now open. Farmers and ranchers can nominate themselves or others as candidates to sit on the local county committee and help make important agricultural decisions. Nominations will be accepted through Aug. 1. Learn more.