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Building a Better Future for Our Children
ICYMI, here's what happened last week at USDA:
We know that investing in initiatives that promote healthy rural families is a powerful tool to put our kids on a path to success. As we approach the new school year, we’re taking some time to underscore the importance of building a strong foundation for kids not only through proper access to nutritious, affordable food, but also by building a diverse rural economy, capable of supporting the needs of rural families.
We kicked off National Farmers Market Week in Santa Fe, New Mexico with AMS Administrator Alonzo as part of a weeklong celebration of the positive role that farmers markets play in our rural communities. Farmers markets help fuel the rural economy by providing opportunities for farmers and ranchers to market their food locally, creating jobs and keeping dollars in the local economy. They also benefit communities across the country by providing increased access to fresh, healthy food.
In addition to Farmers Market week, USDA also celebrated National WIC Breastfeeding Week. For more than four decades, WIC has helped produce better outcomes for our nation’s most vulnerable women, infants and children, shaping a healthier future for millions of the program’s beneficiaries. Breastfeeding provides health, nutritional, economic and emotional benefits to both mother and baby, which is why WIC provides support for breastfeeding mothers.
In the month of August, we’ll share stories of the many ways USDA works on the ground and with partners to open doors for nation’s youth by ensuring they have all the tools in place to grow up healthy and strong. You can take part on Twitter too using #HealthierNextGen.
The Week in Pictures
All images available in Flickr.
On the USDA Blog
Building a Better Future for our Children
We know that making sure our children have access to a good education and nutritious food helps put them on a path to success. Building a strong foundation for our nation’s youth means ensuring they have all the tools in place to grow up healthy and strong. However, too many American children live in households where healthy food is not always available. In remote areas especially, families still often face barriers to getting the education and healthcare that they need.
WIC Works: Promoting Breastfeeding & Keeping Mothers & Babies Healthy
Breastfeeding is the most beneficial way a mother can nourish her baby. Breastfed infants have reduced risk of infections, asthma, obesity, diabetes, certain childhood cancers, and SIDS, compared with formula fed infants. In addition to its nutritional benefits, breastfeeding supports the baby’s developing immune system and helps to protect against respiratory and intestinal infections.
Celebrating National Farmers Market Week with the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program
Fighting hunger and improving the health of those who receive nutrition assistance can require creative measures. So as we celebrate USDA’s 16th annual National Farmers Market Week (August 2 -8), it’s important to remember the multitude of benefits farmers markets can offer our nation’s struggling families. These days, low-income mothers can more easily access fresh fruits and vegetables thanks to farmers markets.
Healthy Babies Grow Up To Be Healthier Kids
WIC works. But don’t just take it from us. For more than four decades, WIC has helped produce better pregnancy results, such as increased birth weights and fewer premature births for our nation’s most vulnerable. And it’s these critical outcomes at the start of life that shape a healthier future for millions of the program’s beneficiaries. Officially known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, WIC continues to serve as the nation’s most successful, cost-effective and important nutrition intervention program.
Partnering with Faith-Based and Community Organizations to Better Serve People in Need
At USDA we work through partnerships to provide opportunities to people in need. Through relationships with both faith-based and secular community organizations, we are able to achieve our shared goals representative of America’s core values of caring for each other, including making sure that every family and every child is healthy and hunger free. Our partners serve thousands of Americans each day, providing emergency food assistance to families and nutritious meals to kids in the summer when school is closed.
ARS Employee Volunteers Time, Expertise to Iowa Community Garden
As an agricultural research science technician at the Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station in Ames, Iowa, Fred Engstrom’s responsibilities are wide-ranging. They include tasks from managing the station’s nursery and field plots to modifying research equipment and collecting yield data for critical projects such as the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize program.
Ensuring Program Integrity in the WIC Program
For more than 40 years, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has provided supplemental foods and nutrition services vital to the health and nutrition of vulnerable moms, newborns and young children. And throughout those four decades, we’ve had a long-standing history of working with WIC state agencies to ensure program resources and taxpayer dollars are being used efficiently.
Listening and Learning From Local Food Stakeholders in New Mexico
As part of National Farmers Market Week, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Administrator Anne L. Alonzo and I traveled to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. The bustling Santa Fe Farmers Market was the perfect place to kick off the week! While there, we also traveled to the beautiful countryside and met with key local food stakeholders during a special session and visits to local farms.
Farmers Markets and SNAP – A Win-Win for All
Farmers markets create the ultimate win-win-win scenario. They provide consumers access to locally grown fruits, vegetables, and other foods, while also giving farmers the opportunity to develop a personal relationship with their customers. Just ask executive director Jerry Lami who manages the West Coast Farmers Market Association.Mr. Lami knows firsthand the positive developments that farmers markets can spark.
USDA TV
Read about us in the News
USDA: NM farmers markets serve communities (Deming Headlight)
If you need proof that farmers markets are good for the economy and community, just spend some time this week during National Farmers Market Week watching the exchanges of locally grown food, dollars, and conversation that take place at any one of New Mexico's 75 farmers markets. USDA officials were in Santa Fe on Saturday, Aug. 1, to kick off the national event. "[The Santa Fe Farmers Market has] gone from a small, informal group of farmers organizing in the 1960s to the largest farmers market in the state with [more than 100] active vendors," said Anne Alonzo, the administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). She pointed to the fact that the Santa Fe market is often ranked as one of the top 10 farmers markets in the country.
Celebrate National Farmers Market Week (AgriView)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated the week of August 2-8 as National Farmers Market Week. Both the number and size of farmers markets across the United States have grown over the years. This is the 16th annual National Farmers Market Week. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has identified strengthening local food systems – including farmers markets – as one of the four pillars of USDA’s commitment to rural economic development and job creation
National Farmers' Market Week celebrates programs like Double Dollars (WKOW)
Farmers' markets across the country are being recognized this week. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared this week National Farmers' Market Week, celebrating how more than 6,000 markets in the U.S. accept SNAP, or Foodshare benefits. The Monona Farmers' Market is one of them. Its manager says the market is getting more popular. "People really love it here," says manager Stacy Iruk. "I get so many people coming up to me even before the market starts, 'I love being at the market! when does it start?' Whether it's vendors, customers, old customers, new customers...there's definitely a buzz around the Monona Farmers' Market."
Vilsack: The cost of fighting wildfires is sapping Forest Service budget (Seattle Times)
WILDFIRES are now burning in Washington and across the West, in a year that may become the hottest on record. As our forests go up in flames, so too does the budget of the U.S. Forest Service, putting at risk lives, property, clean air and water, and jobs for thousands. The number of fires the Forest Service and its partners fight every year is staggering: There have been more than 36,000 fires this year alone. And although we are successful at suppressing or managing 98 percent of fires when they start, the 1 to 2 percent of fires that escape are expensive, constituting 30 percent of annual costs.
As California fires rage, the Forest Service sounds the alarm about rising wildfire costs (Washington Post/Tribune Live)
As 14 large fires rage across California, the U.S. Forest Service is sounding the alarm about the exploding cost of protecting people and property from a growing wildfire threat. In a new report to be released Wednesday, the agency says that while it spent 16 percent of its total budget on preparing for and fighting fires in 1995, it will spend more than half its budget this year on the same task — and a projected 67 percent or more by 2025 under current funding arrangements.
All These Fires Are Burning Through Firefighters’ Budgets (Wired)
The whole west is freckled with fires. And in between each fire, the land is dry and hot as hell. As of yesterday, six million acres of US land has caught fire in 2015. But it’s not the burning land that has firefighters anxious. It’s that the money we’re throwing at these fires is burning up, and will soon come out of the budget for preventing future fires. The vicious cycle was outlined Wednesday in a report from the US Forest Service. In the past 20 years, the agency’s firefighting budget has more than tripled, which means less money for everything else the service does. And even that budget swell isn’t enough fuel for the firefighting: Many years—including the past three—fire suppression has gone over its already-inflated budget, burning through money for other programs.
California’s Extreme Drought Is Fueling Bigger, More Costly Wildfires (BuzzFeed)
A series of ongoing wildfires has burned more than 300,000 acres in the Golden State. The largest, dubbed the Rocky Fire, has charred more than 68,000 acres — more than twice the size of the city of San Francisco. In Alaska, hundreds of wildfires have burned millions of acres, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare 2015 the state’s worst fire year on record. Wildfires have also scorched large parts of Oregon, Washington, Utah, and other western states. In a report released Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service revealed that it now spends more than half of its annual budget fighting wildfires, pushing the agency to a “tipping point.” That’s up from only 16% of the budget in 1996.
Listen
A FARMERS MARKET WEEK CELEBRATION IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
Broadcast Date:
Sat, August 1, 2015
National Farmers Market Week opens with a big celebration in Santa Fe, New Mexico. (Gary Crawford and Anne Alonzo)
FARMERS MARKETS GROWING IN NUMBERS AND SALES
Broadcast Date:
Tue, August 4, 2015
New reports and surveys continue to show that more of us are buying more of our food from local farmers at farmers markets. Gary Crawford has this report. PARTICIPANTS: Gary Crawford. Anne Alonzo, Administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. Kathy Debernard, Virginia farmer.
SOME RELIEF FOR PEANUT ALLERGY SUFFERERS SOON?
Broadcast Date:
Tue, August 4, 2015
Research on treating peanuts to reduce or remove allergens is good news for those with peanut allergies. Rod Bain reports. PARTICIPANTS: Rod Bain. Secretary Tom Vilsack. Dr. Jianmei Yu of North Carolina A and T University. North Carolina A and T President Harold Martin.
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Secretary Vilsack kicks off August with a message on building a #HealthierNextGen http://t.co/ljfJu6ejOT pic.twitter.com/k2cEOoUQc2
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) August 3, 2015
Celebrating Nat'l Farmers Mkt Week w/ WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program http://t.co/AftxJctwem #healthiernextgen pic.twitter.com/NWS2rproMl
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) August 3, 2015
Yesterday, joined @USDA & @pgcps to increase schools’ ability to provide healthy meals to students. #HealthierNextGen pic.twitter.com/TuTXVmHULH
— Rep Donna F Edwards (@repdonnaedwards) August 4, 2015
Proud to celebrate National Farmers Market Week with @USDA. See how FFA members celebrate all year » http://t.co/NmFPPHjXPZ #FarmMktWk
— National FFA (@NationalFFA) August 5, 2015
Wondering where to celebrate National Farmers Market Week this week? Find out here: http://t.co/1mxcFvQiSk via @USDA pic.twitter.com/YKo5NmeiPq
— Marcy Kaptur (@RepMarcyKaptur) August 5, 2015
WIC improves the health of nutritionally at-risk women, infants & children → http://t.co/3PJcNDmgKv #HealthierNextGen pic.twitter.com/YdMikJT2Je
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) August 3, 2015
Healthy babies grow up to be healthier kids http://t.co/Y3kT76aQsB #healthiernextgen pic.twitter.com/SHBKKqPlaC
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) August 4, 2015
