ERS

This year, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) celebrates its 50 th anniversary. ERS was established on April 3, 1961 during the Kennedy Administration, when USDA combined the Department’s economic research functions into one agency. The functions of our predecessor agency, the Bureau of...

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: Ensuring that Americans eat well and lead healthy lives is among our greatest goals at USDA. First Lady Michelle Obama, of course, has taken an important role on this front – leading a national conversation and administration-wide effort. As part of the Lets...

Much of my work as a sociologist at the Economic Research Service (ERS) involves research on the food security of U.S. households – their ability to consistently obtain adequate food. My colleagues and I were naturally concerned about how the economic downturn that began in late 2007 would affect...

Today, the Economic Research Service (ERS) posted a new and innovative interactive mapping tool that makes it easy to visualize and compare rural economic and social conditions among counties, states, and regions. By creating county-level maps of the United States, users can see how socioeconomic...

As the Economic Research Service celebrates its 50 th Anniversary this year and looks back over the decades, the legacy of Senior Demographer Calvin Beale stands out due to the 55-plus-year length of his service at USDA and the impact of his work.

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 USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. It’s an all-too-familiar truism: Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. Last week, USDA unveiled the 2010 Dietary...

About this time last year, the city of Washington, DC was digging out from a record amount of snow. My colleagues at USDA’s Economic Research Service were communicating electronically to get a new web-based mapping tool – the Food Environment Atlas – up and running. This online tool, which measures...

Each year our agency, USDA’s Economic Research Service, produces a six-page brochure packed with information on social and economic conditions in rural areas of the nation. This information is particularly useful for agencies that develop policies and programs to assist rural areas. We recently...