technology

As Kentucky does its best to battle the spread of COVID-19, state officials and medical providers have been looking for ways to answer the increasing need for medical personal protective equipment. One of those responding in a big way here in Kentucky is a somewhat unlikely source: Somerset Community College.

Good things come in small packages. Sadly, so do bad things. That’s where Iowa State University’s (ISU) Department of Mechanical Engineering comes in.

The digital divide between population centers and rural America is a fact of life. For some, it’s simply a lack of cell phone coverage; for others, it signals a lack of education for their children.

Wildfires blackened nearly 8.8 million acres in the United States last year, highlighted in the news by California’s Camp Fire, the deadliest in that state’s history.

Agriculture is dynamic, adjusting in response to changes in the economy, technology, the environment, and policy – and agricultural production affects a wide range of natural resources.

What are the macro trends in food production and policy? In this blog, USDA Senior Economist Anne Effland gives an overview of how consumers are shaping the way food is grown and how USDA is supporting the evolving food system. Read more in the article Effland co-authored with Carolyn Dimitri in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.

America’s vast western grazing lands produce food for the nation, recreation revenues for local communities, and habitat for wildlife. Producers often manage large swaths of rangelands, making it a challenge to track how vegetation has fared over time.

USDA has committed to becoming a facts-based, data-driven, customer-focused organization. One of the Department’s two Agency Priority Goals (APGs) for FY18-19 is to develop the USDA Chief Executive Officer (CXO) Dashboards, which integrate data from systems spanning the agency’s 29 agencies and staff offices, and provide the Department with enhanced capacity to collect accurate, reliable, complete, accessible, and consistent data. With this initiative, USDA will have created the first Cabinet-level suite of comprehensive administrative dashboards for seven administrative functions: human resources, information technology, finance, property, procurement, security, and operations.