By Liz Sawyer, reporter, Waterford Kettering High School newspaper

When I first heard about Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity, I thought that it was a honorable effort on her behalf, but that it would be a futile attempt to try to introduce healthier meals in schools. Adults think that adolescents are extremely stubborn about what they consume throughout the day, and in many cases, they are. I’m a senior in high school, and must admit that even I have a limited palate, so the likelihood of getting kindergarteners to try new fruits and vegetables seemed slim to none.

But I was mistaken. Yesterday, Audrey Rowe, Deputy Administrator for Special Nutrition Programs for the USDA visited Waterford Village Elementary School. She was presented with some of their new initiatives to improve nutrition. The students at Village started their own vegetable garden on school grounds and plan to incorporate those crops into their daily meals. In addition to the garden, these students receive free vegetables weekly and are actually excited to try new healthy snacks. I was nothing short of surprised when the children lined up for the salad bar, and immediately wished that we had one available to us at the secondary level.

Some of the students I spoke with yesterday said that after being exposed to more vegetables on a daily basis, they wanted to continue eating them at home. Now I was in absolute shock. If this trend continues in the elementary schools, maybe the older students will begin to eat more than just macaroni and cheese and pizza for lunch. We should all take a lesson from Village.

FNS Deputy Administrator for Special Nutrition Programs Audrey Rowe with a student serving beverages during lunch

at Waterford Elementary School.

I am very pleased to launch our latest effort to encourage more widespread use and understanding of the life-saving field of telemedicine through our Power of Telemedicine web discussion.  Telemedicine has grown steadily over the past decade. The USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) has participated consistently along the way, supporting innovation in telemedicine as early as 1993 with our Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant program. Our telemedicine program is designed specifically to meet the health care needs of rural America.  Through loans, grants and loan and grant combinations, advanced telecommunications technologies provide enhanced health care opportunities for rural residents.  It, together with our Distance Learning program, has funded over 900 projects in 48 states and several US Territories totaling over $300 million. Read more »

By Audrey Rowe, FNS Deputy Administrator for Special Nutrition Programs

 I’ve had a chance to see a great deal of impressive schools during my tour of the country to speak about Child Nutrition Reauthorization.  My recent visit to Waterford Village Elementary was no exception.  Witnessing their approach to providing their students good nutrition and physical fitness activities hammers home the importance of the commitments they and those in their communities have made.

Given that reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act is currently pending, I was eager to hear from students, teachers, and food service workers about how USDA can improve its programs and further support efforts like those made by this suburban Detroit school.  

I was inspired and encouraged by what I saw and heard, as well as the people I met.

For starters, I toured the school’s amazing garden with Master Gardener Kathy Wolak. Kathy demonstrated how she uses raised planters to educate students about growing and caring for vegetables. She and the school plan to expand the garden to include fruit trees and to supply the nearby cafeteria with veggies and salad fixings to bring a whole new meaning to the term “locally-grown”.  

After the garden tour, I had a tasty, freshly-prepared lunch with the veggie-lovin’ students of Waterford Village. Mary Seeterlin, Waterford’s food service manager and the School District’s Food and Nutritional Services staff have made eating lunch exciting at Waterford. Among other practices, they created a vegetable of the week program to get kids to try all sorts of new things. More than one student told me how much they like the program and I was surprised by how many kids ate fresh salads, garbanzo beans and even fresh broccoli—that’s right, fresh broccoli!  

While with the students I mentioned First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.  In return, I learned about a number of the school’s efforts to promote physical activity. A few of the students proudly displayed their enthusiasm for exercise by showing off with a few jumping jacks. They asked me to join them,  which provided one of my favorite memories of the day!  

I was inspired by so many people at Waterford that it’s difficult to name them all. 

I look forward to visiting another school in the future, to hear about their innovative practices in nutrition and physical activity.  But I’m also interested in hearing about the continued successes of Waterford Village’s amazing elementary school.  

A Waterford Elementary School student enjoying a salad.

Audrey Rowe exercising with students at Waterford Elementary School.

This week marks World Trade Week within the U.S. government. Even though every week is world trade week at the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), this formal recognition gives the agency the opportunity to emphasize the importance of international trade and how FAS programs directly impact the ability for American farmers and producers to find markets for their products overseas.

One of the ways FAS works to promote U.S. agricultural products overseas is through its market development programs. U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) has participated in several of these programs, including the Market Access Program and Foreign Market Development program.

Last month, U.S. Wheat Associates used FAS’s Market Access Program (MAP) to sponsor a trade visit to the United States for flour milling executives from Nigeria to tell the story of how a partnership between the U.S. government and wheat producers has helped them build the second largest industry in the West African nation. Nigeria buys more U.S. hard red winter wheat every year than any other country and will likely be the largest U.S. wheat buyer in the world in 2009/10 (June-May). As much as 90 percent of the wheat milled in Nigeria is imported from the United States, including hard red spring, hard white, durum, and soft red winter wheat.

“U.S. wheat has also become a basic ingredient for greater economic opportunity in Nigeria,” said USW President Alan Tracy. “Doing business in Nigeria can be difficult, but their milling industry supports thousands of jobs and is still expanding its capacity. We have supported that growth by helping these millers introduce new products like pasta, instant noodles, and cookies into this growing market.”

These market development programs helped provide in-country USW representation, support trade and technical service activities, and allow USW to bring trade teams to the United States to educate buyers, technicians, and government officials about how to get the most value possible from U.S. wheat.

“Whatever we have achieved, the foundation has been laid by U.S. Wheat Associates,” said Mr. Tunde Odunayo, Chairman of Honeywell Flour Mills, Lagos, Nigeria. “We know that USW is funded by farmers and USDA. It is money well-spent.”

Another example of market development program success can be found in U.S. Wheat Associates’ efforts in Indonesia where the organization’s sustained trade and technical service in the emerging Indonesian market has helped increase U.S. wheat sales and share in a market dominated by nearby Australia. Between 2001/2002 and 2006/2007, total U.S. wheat sales to Indonesia were about 1.74 million metric tons (MMT) and the annual market share never exceeded 10 percent. As USW learned that new mills were planned, its representatives encouraged the owners and trained technical managers to produce new flour products made with U.S. wheat to compete in a growing high-quality baked goods market segment.

As a result, the U.S. wheat share increased to more than 15 percent as millers became more satisfied with the results. Since 2007/08, total U.S. wheat sales have exceeded 3 MMT. The incremental sales are worth $252 million to producers from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Plains and the Southeast. At the same time, the effort is helping the Indonesian milling industry build its competitive capacity. This is just another example of how market development programs help cooperators achieve export success.

 Wheat producer Jeff Sulak (left) discusses a new hard red winter wheat variety with members of a Nigerian trade team sponsored by FAS cooperator U.S. Wheat Associates during a late-April visit to his farm near Covington, Texas. Left to right, Tunde Odunayo, Vice-Chairman / CEO  of Honeywell Flour Mills in Lagos, Nigeria, Rajesh Gaggar is Procurement Manager for noodle manufacturer Dufil Group, and Kikelomo  Ayoola is Manager of Commodity Finance for Ecobank PLC. (Courtesy of U.S. Wheat Associates)

By Phil Sammon

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even bats and small mammals do it. So it’s only natural that the Conservation Education Department of the USDA Forest Service worked with other conservation education partners to do it – pollinate!

On Wednesday, May 12, the Forest Service helped produce “PollinatorLIVE: A Distance Learning Adventure” from The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. to tell the story of pollinators in our world. Orchestrated by conservation education partner Prince William Network’s media production department, the live and interactive production was designed to reach teachers, educators and students through the live webcast and related web-based resources, projects, and backyard research ideas. This 2010 program follows onto the 2009 MonarchLIVE  project that ultimately reached more than 200,000 students. It is estimated that the PollinatorLIVE production from the Smithsonian National Zoo reached between 50,000 and 75,000 students, educators, and community members, with an overall 2010 program goal to reach as many as 500,000.

The program kicked off at 11 a.m. with five related segments featuring a host of specialists, researchers, biologists and scientists. These knowledgeable guests explained and demonstrated different types of pollinators and their importance to our daily lives, and also took questions from the audiences joining in from their classrooms all across the country. One teacher linked to a local cable system in order to bring the program to her entire school.

“The whole production was fantastic – absolutely brilliant!” declared Dr. Safiya Samman, director for the Forest Service Conservation Education Department. She commented that the partners and their production crew did an exceptional job of conveying a wealth of information about the importance of pollinators to our world at a level aimed at younger students. “Partners are excited about continuing work and building relationships with the USDA. 

“It was absolutely incredible!” declared Tamberly Conway, a Conservation Education Specialist from the National Forests and Grasslands in Texas, who worked on this project with the Washington Office staff. “We had wonderful rapport with the partners and their production staff, and great participation by so many others to pull this off. It was so much fun!”

Ben Swecker, Media Production Manager with Prince William County School District added, “We had an amazing group of experts in this live webcast who were extremely enthusiastic about studying insects and pollinators.  That kind of passion really comes across to students.  Classrooms from all over the country were sending in questions all day long. Students want to interact using the latest technology and these live distance learning adventures enable them to be a part of the program. “

The entire production was also taped, and will be available for viewing at the PollinatorLIVE website, http://pollinatorlive.pwnet.org/ after May 17. Teachers and educators can find a wealth of teaching and learning resources, curriculum support, and activities for a wide range of grades at the same site.

You can find out more about the Forest Service Conservation programs and activities at http://tinyurl.com/3xh87tg as well as specific Kids information at http://www.fs.fed.us/kids/

Production members and the on-air moderators and guests prepare for the kick-off of the five-segment live webcast of Pollinator LIVE from the Smithsonian’s national Zoo May 12.

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Forest Service Highlights the Buzz on Pollinators

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Forest Service Highlights the Buzz on Pollinators

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By Michael Jones, USDA Public Affairs Director, Ohio

Tammye Trevino, USDA Rural Development Administrator for Housing and Community Facilities, visited Columbus, Ohio recently to participate in the sixth of 10 scheduled Self-Help Housing Forums being held around the country. Joining her on the panel were Ohio’s First Lady Frances Strickland and Ohio Rural Development State Director Tony Logan.

More than 50 participants from Ohio and surrounding states attended the forum and engaged in a free-flowing exchange of ideas to improve the administration and effectiveness of Rural Development’s Self-Help Housing Program.

Part of the dialogue centered on incorporating new strategies aimed at increasing nationwide participation and ultimate success in the program. Participants collectively expressed concern about the financial stability and timely distribution of the program’s funding, particularly to organizations that have documented home building experience and proven operational success.

Moderated by Mrs. Strickland, Ohio’s forum included comments from two of Ohio’s most successful Self-Help Housing Program proponents. Representatives from both the Fayette County Community Action Agency and Three Rivers Housing Corporation provided valuable input about how they’ve used the program as well as offering suggestions about adjustments they would make to help improve its operation.

Ohio’s Self-Help Program has an impressive record of helping families achieve their dream of home ownership. Since 1992 Ohio’s self-help housing organizations have used more than $22.7 million in Rural Development funding to assist 240 families join the home ownership ranks.