Elvis Cordova, Acting Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture, addressing the North Dakota Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Task Force in Bismarck, North Dakota

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery and many survivors of it didn’t realize that their situation was a crime. This crime occurs when a trafficker uses force, fraud or coercion to control another person for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or soliciting labor or services against his/her will.  Any child engaged in a commercial sex act is a victim of trafficking, regardless of force, fraud, or coercion.

This summer, USDA and HHS leveraged its resources to coordinate efforts that address the needs of human trafficking survivors in rural and tribal areas.  This joint partnership resulted as part of the Federal Strategic Action Plan on Services for Victims of Human Trafficking in the U.S., a five-year plan by the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. This Plan outlines more than 250 actions the Federal government will take to coordinate and collaborate on anti-trafficking responses with state, Tribal, and local government and non-government organizations. Read more »

USDA Director Janet Nuzum shows the USDA exhibit at “Fast Forward 2060” to Dr. Paul Watanabe, a Commissioner on the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and Director of the UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies.

Did you know that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) make up the fastest growing population group in the United States?  Increasing over four times as rapidly as the overall U.S. population, AAPIs are projected to more than double by 2060, from 20 million today to 50 million. A recent event in the nation’s capital focused on the implications of this trend, in a public exhibit and conference entitled “Fast Forward 2060″ (FF 2060) As USDA’s Senior Advisor and Director of AAPI Affairs, I was excited to participate in this event and exhibit the ways that USDA serves the AAPI community.

Ben & Jerry’s and its dairy partners will use the information generated by COMET to identify on-farm conservation actions—such as approaches to manure management and soil health management practices—that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon. Photo: Kari Cohen, NRCS.

Eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream may make you feel guilty about your waistline, but thanks to a new partnership between the ice cream company and USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), you may be able to feel less guilty about contributing to climate change. The partnership is designed to help Ben & Jerry’s milk suppliers—generally small dairies—understand their greenhouse gas footprint and consider voluntary conservation approaches to reduce that footprint.

NRCS and Ben & Jerry’s will help dairies implement conservation practices that meet Ben & Jerry’s objective of “Happy Cows, Happy Planet, & Happy Farmers.” Through its Caring Dairy sustainability program, Ben & Jerry’s will use USDA’s suite of greenhouse gas estimation tools, COMET-Farm^TM and COMET-Planner^TM, to quantify on-farm GHG emissions and reductions. The COMET tools—COMET stands for CarbOn Management & Emissions Tool – are a product of a long-standing partnership between NRCS and Colorado State University. Read more »

A teacher in the Mara region of Tanzania proudly shows her classroom full of learning resources in a reading corner she created with help from PCI’s McGovern-Dole program. The program is more than a school feeding program, it also helps feed students’ appetites for learning.

USDA’s McGovern–Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program helps reduce hunger and improve literacy and primary education in low-income, food-deficit countries around the world. Today, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) works hand-in-hand with non-profit charitable organizations and others to operate McGovern-Dole programs in 25 countries. One of these partnerships is with Project Concern International (PCI) for a multifaceted school feeding program in northern Tanzania.

FAS caught up with PCI Operations Officer Kara West while visiting Tanzania to glean an insider’s perspective on the program. Read more »

The new online resource: Responses to Climate Change: What You Need to Know gives a brief overview of the adaptation options, resistance, resilience, and transition, and how to incorporate them into natural resource planning, as well as providing definitions and descriptions of mitigation and restoration.

The Climate Change Resource Center (CCRC) has recently released a new education resource on climate change adaptation responses to help the USDA Forest Service, USDA Climate Hubs, other agencies, and the general public learn more about responding to a changing climate.  The CCRC is an online, nationally-relevant resource that connects land managers and decision-makers with credible, relevant, and useable science to address climate change in natural resource planning and application.

Natural resource managers are already observing changes in their forests and rangelands and experiencing challenges managing these lands in a changing climate.  In order to continue to maintain healthy forests and rangelands into the future, land managers need to understand how to address these challenges and respond to climate change effects.  This requires that managers assess the vulnerabilities and risks associated with climate change and choose the best course of action for the landscapes they manage. Read more »

Robert G. Bruton was hired as an ARS lab technician after participating in a USDA program that helps train students at tribal colleges – Native Americans and those from other backgrounds – in science and technology. (Photo credit: USDA-ARS)

Robert G. Bruton grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana in a family that, like many others, was severely challenged by the rising college tuition costs. He is not a Native American, but he chose to attend Salish Kootenai Tribal College in Pablo, Montana, in part because of its reasonable cost.

He knew he liked chemistry and his grades were good enough to qualify him to serve as a science and math tutor for fellow students. The school was one of the few tribal colleges nationwide that offered four-year bachelor’s degrees. But as a first-year student, Bruton was like a lot of other people – he wasn’t quite sure what direction his life would take. Read more »