energy

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA's rich science and research portfolio.

By Greg Smith, National Program Leader, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture

By Jonathan Adelstein, Administrator-USDA Rural Utilities Service

If you lived in a rural area 75 years ago, you probably didn’t have electricity. Water for livestock, cooking, cleaning and bathing had to be hand pumped from a well. Farmers risked milk spoilage in the summer, and people often got sick from lack of refrigeration of their food.

At a Town Hall meeting in Burlington, Vermont, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the selection of Vermont Renewable Energy Company for a USDA Rural Development Business and Industry Loan Guarantee for a $10 million loan given by Community National Bank. The funds will be used to provide essential capital to establish a new pellet processing plant at the former furniture manufacturing facility in Island Pond, Vermont.

It is difficult for most people to comprehend the distances and diversity we face here in California.  For example: the distance from Smith River, in the Northwest corner of California, to Winterhaven, in the Southeast corner, is the same distance as it is from Chicago to Washington, D.C.

Earlier this week I participated in an Obama Administration Clean Energy Economy Forum in Arlington, Virginia with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewables Cathy Zoi, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, and former U.S. Senator John Warner.

As you walk through the facilities at headquarters in Washington and in the field, it quickly becomes apparent that a new attitude has taken hold at USDA: A drive to use energy more efficiently.  These efforts were noted by President Obama and the White House Council on Environmental Quality recently when USDA was chosen as one of six departments (and seven teams) in the Government to receive a Presidential Award for Leadership in Federal Energy Management.  USDA won the award for reducing energy and water use through tools including energy savings performance contracts, utility service con

Sietsma Farms in central Michigan sends more than a million turkeys a year to the dinner table.

That’s a lot of Thanksgiving feasts.

Today we are formally launching a new enterprise in USDA science, a National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).  NIFA will be a real agent of transformation in how we do science at USDA, not just in this new agency, but across the board.  As I reflect on this pivotal moment for USDA science, I am reminded of another transformative episode in USDA history:  the Morrill Act of 1862 that created the land-grant university system that has been the scaffold for building the research enterprise we have today.