Missouri

Judy Canales, Administrator for Rural Development Business and Cooperative Service, joined Missouri Governor Jay Nixon for an evening reception and visited with many of Missouri’s agriculture and rural elite to celebrate Missouri agriculture. The following morning Administrator Canales, Governor...

The Feds Feed Families (FFF) drive is a great opportunity for all of us to give something to those who are less fortunate. I accepted the challenge and went out Saturday morning and did some shopping and loaded up 285 pounds of food. It was actually quite fun to think about what someone might like...

It is the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) County Committee nomination time and counties across the nation are reaching out in their communities for a diverse group of nominees. Butler County, Missouri, has seen firsthand the benefits of outreach efforts. During the 2010 election, a woman and an African...

On the heels of Secretary Vilsack’s visit to the Midwest last week to inspect Missouri River flood damage to area farms and communities, Farm and Foreign Service (FFAS) Acting Deputy Under Secretary Karis Gutter stopped by Mounds City, Missouri and Hamburg, Iowa to hear from local producers, and to...

Four more states will be added to the list of project areas under a Farm Service Agency program that encourages producers to establish dedicated energy crops to be used for production of biofuels. Today’s announcement is expected to spark the creation of thousands of new jobs in future production...

A three day visit to Missouri, the “Show Me State” allowed me to join Janie Dunning, Rural Development State Director, to see how rural areas benefiting from infrastructure investments made possible through USDA Rural Development programs and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( Recovery Act)...

In December of 2009 an apartment building owned by Rodney and Betty Hestekin sustained major damage in a fire. The building had been financed through USDA Rural Development’s Multi-Family Housing program. All 18 tenants living in the building were displaced. Rodney and Betty immediately sprang into...

What better way to celebrate Earth Day last month than to recognize projects that are environmentally friendly and to educate our elementary school youths. That's exactly what we did in northwest Missouri. The Missouri Rural Development (RD) staff partnered with the Senior Citizens Nursing Home...

The views are breathtaking in what’s known as the “driftless area” in the upper Midwest, which encompasses parts of southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin, northeast Iowa and northwest Illinois. This unique area was bypassed by retreating glaciers during the end of the last Ice Age several...

USDA staff in Missouri joined Governor Jay Nixon on May 10 and May 11, 2011, at five Flood Recovery Resource Meetings to an estimated 600 people in Southeast Missouri. The meetings were held in the cities of Poplar Bluff, Sikeston, Charleston, New Madrid and Caruthersville which are located in the...