The over 670 veterans who attended the event received new shoes and other aid.

As a federal employee for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, it is part of my job to know the many faces of hunger. People in need can come from all backgrounds, ages, locations, and walks of life. They are children. They are senior citizens. They are even those who are newly unemployed during our nation’s economic downturn. I knew all of this. But what caught me off guard was the fact that many are also our nation’s veterans. Read more »

“As a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, my work as a logistics embarkation specialist gave me ability to multi-task on a number of important projects. These skills were crucial to my transition to my position here at AMS,” said Lauren Hilliker, AMS Fruit and Vegetable Programs. She is shown here with another AMS employee, Candice Spalding, talking with veterans and Justice Department staff at a NAVSEA career event in September 2011.

At the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), we employ several veterans from different branches of the armed services.  Their experience and training built them into strong multi-taskers, leaders and analytical thinkers—all of them invaluable teammates and civil servants.  They each took a different path to get to USDA, and the skills and abilities they honed during their military service were crucial to their successful transition into their civilian career paths. Read more »

Satellites orbiting the Earth help us in countless ways. For example, they allow the GPS in our smartphones to tell us where we are located and they help us watch football games on weekends. And now a new NASA satellite scheduled for launch in 2014—the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) instrument—will help USDA better predict agricultural productivity and forecast drought conditions.

There are three things of utmost importance to farmers—soil, sun and water. SMAP will serve at the junction of two of these variables, helping USDA and others improve its knowledge and understanding of soil moisture. Measuring soil moisture helps scientists, farmers, water managers and others understand how much water will be available at any given time, which influences the key decisions they make about managing and using water supplies. Read more »

An example of the invasiveness of the garlic mustard plant. (Photo credit: Steven Katovich, U.S. Forest Service)

Year three of the “Garlic Mustard Challenge” produced a bumper crop, not for hot dog relish, but bags of the non-native invasive species garlic mustard.  The goals of this challenge and the weed pull are not simply in eradicating the invasive garlic mustard plant, but also in educating and inspiring individuals to get out and enjoy our national forests and grasslands. Read more »

When Estelle Bowman was a little girl, she tagged along to meetings with attorneys who worked with her mother in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Shiprock, N.M. As she grew older on the Navajo reservation town, she knew that she would one day become an attorney and serve her Navajo community.

Over the years, Bowman has done both and more. Today, the former district prosecutor for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice is the assistant director of the Office of Tribal Relations in Washington, D.C. for the U.S. Forest Service. Read more »