U. S. Representative Rush Holt (left) and USDA Food and Nutrition Service Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Pat Dombroski mingle with proud children showing off their school garden before tasting an eatable flower grown just a few feet away.

How does one turn a cold, miserable rainy day in late October into one as bright and warm as a sunny day in June?  Just visit a local elementary school where students and teachers and community volunteers are all so excited about the bountiful garden out back behind the school.  A magical place where young minds learn about growing healthy foods, about earthworms and soil, about cover crops and harvesting, about composting and frost dates, and about how tasty that strange looking vegetable with the funny name is . . . the one they started to grow from seedlings last school year. Read more »

USDA’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization recently announced that in honor of Veteran’s Day, Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses will have an opportunity to meet and participate in networking sessions with USDA program and acquisition specialists on the Patio, Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building on November 8, 2011, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.   There will also be an opportunity to meet one-on-one with USDA contracting agency representatives to describe their agency’s program objectives, direction and acquisitions.

Annually, USDA purchases more than $5 billion dollars in goods and services essential to meeting the needs of our customers and the various missions of the agency.  Approximately 60 percent of these dollars are spent on food commodities. Read more »