X-Nico

40 unusual facts about United States Department of Agriculture


Abies lasiocarpa

The Flora of North America treats it as a distinct species (see external links, below); the USDA includes it within A. lasiocarpa without distinction.

Asphodelus fistulosus

It is listed as a Federal Noxious Weed by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Austroplatypus incompertus

Austroplatypus incompertus have also been found intact in a number of unprocessed lumber stocks of Eucalyptis in the United States according to the USDA.

Banca Nazionale del Lavoro

Many of the loans that the branch made were guaranteed by the United States Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation program.

Billie Sol Estes

At the same time, United States Department of Agriculture began controlling the price of cotton, specifying quotas to farmers.

Canine influenza

In June 2009, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) approved the first canine influenza vaccine.

Centrocercus

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) investigated some of the reasons for the declining sage-grouse population.

Chinese dwarf banana

In 1841, the United States Department of Agriculture introduced Chinese dwarf cooking-bananas to Florida, but there was little interest among consumers at the time.

Claims Resolution Act of 2010

The act is a response to the Pigford v. Glickman case, where black farmers were found to have been discriminated against from 1983 to 1997 by the United States Department of Agriculture when applying for loans and assistants to start and maintain farms.

Cochliomyia

Proposed by a pair of scientists, Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland, and rapidly adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture, the technique centers on a unique reproductive handicap that prevents female hominivorax flies from reproducing more than once in their life-spans.

Coginchaug River

Currently, efforts are being made by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to reduce the number of bacteria introduced into the river from untreated sewage, sanitary sewer overflow, agricultural runoff, leaking septic tanks, etc.

D. Howard Doane

Among his many life accomplishments, Doane served on an agriculture task force appointed by President Herbert Hoover that was charged with reorganizing the United States Department of Agriculture.

Edgar T. Wherry

He lived in Washington, D.C. from 1912 to 1930, part of this time working as an assistant curator of mineralogy for the U. S. National Museum, and also for the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Empresas ADOC

ADOC has retail operations, leather and rubber production and processing operations, and the only abattoire in El Salvador to be United States Department of Agriculture approved.

Ezra A. Carman

After the war, Carman was a civil servant, serving as chief clerk of the United States Department of Agriculture in the years 1877 through 1885.

Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act

The main component of the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act is the Tobacco Transition Payment Program (TTPP, otherwise known as the "Tobacco Buyout"), which was formalized by the United States Department of Agriculture in February 2005.

Glomalin

Glomalin was discovered in 1996 by Sara F. Wright, a scientist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

Howard Francis Corcoran

He served in the United States Department of Agriculture from 1933 to 1934, worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority from 1934 to 1935, an was a legal associate for the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1935 to 1938.

I. T. Quinn

Quinn worked with the Alabama Extension Service in Montgomery County, Alabama from 1915 through 1918, supervised the Division of Fertilizers of the Alabama State Department of Agriculture from 1919 to 1920, and directed county agents in northern Alabama for the United States Department of Agriculture from 1921 to 1922.

Karnal bunt

A few of them have since been lifted, but the USDA continues to monitor the disease in the United States.

Kennard-Dale High School

The program is funded with federal dollars through the United States Department of Agriculture.

Laboratory mouse

In the US, laboratory mice are not regulated under the Animal Welfare Act administered by the USDA APHIS.

Lupe Valdez

She then moved on to investigative roles as an agent of the General Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and, finally, the U.S. Customs Service where she was a leader in the federal Counter Smuggling Initiative.

Myron MacLain

While working for the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., MacLain was visited by an amnesiac mutant named Logan who had been granted an unbreakable metal skeleton and claws.

Myrothecium verrucaria

Since 1998, the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has experimented with using M. verrucaria as a biologically-based herbicide against kudzu vines.

National Grove of State Trees

Although the mid Atlantic region of the United States has mild weather which allows the USDA to grow most of the species designated by the various states as their arboreal emblems, it cannot successfully grow a few of the state trees such as the cabbage palmetto, which is the state tree of both Florida and South Carolina, or the kukui, which is Hawaii's state tree.

National Register of Big Trees

To be eligible, a species must be recognized as native or naturalized in the continental United States, including Alaska but not Hawaii, as documented in Elbert L. Little Jr.'s Checklist of United States Trees (Native and Naturalized), published in 1979 as Agricultural Handbook 541 by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Naval Station Pearl Harbor

Despite the warnings of the Bureau of Equipment, the War Department, the Department of Labor and Commerce, and the Department of Agriculture had secured permission to settle on the naval reservation.

North American AJ Savage

Both squadrons frequently provided photographic mapping for agencies outside the Navy like the Army Map Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture.

Puccinia jaceae var. solstitialis

solstitialis is the first pathogen approved by the United States Department of Agriculture as a classical biological control agent.

Richard Arnell

Arnell composed the music for The Land (1942), a 45-minute documentary film directed by Robert J. Flaherty for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Sodium polyacrylate

The origins of super absorbent polymer chemistry trace back to the early 1960s when the U.S. Department of Agriculture developed the first super absorbent polymer materials.

SORBA

In 2005, SORBA-Chattanooga was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by the United States Department of Agriculture for its active participation in the volunteer trail maintenance program of the Ocoee/Hiwassee District of the Cherokee National Forest.

Spondias dulcis

The United States Department of Agriculture received seeds from Liberia in 1909, but it did not become a popular crop in the US.

Spring Grove Area High School

The meals are partially funded with federal dollars through the United States Department of Agriculture.

The Paw Project

Since the filming of The Paw Project, the United States Department of Agriculture had enacted a ban on the declawing and defanging of wild and exotic carnivores.

Thomas Volney Munson

He became recognized as a botanist as well as a viticulturist, a volume entitled Native Trees of the Southwest having been prepared under the direction of the United States Department of Agriculture and a similar thesis being submitted in 1883 for the master's degree at the Kentucky Agricultural College.

Trolox

Oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) used to be an alternative measurement, but the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) withdrew these ratings in 2012 as biologically invalid, stating that no physiological proof in vivo existed to support the free-radical theory.

Vernon Orlando Bailey

He was employed by the Bureau of Biological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Zoysia matrella

USFS US Department of Agriculture Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk (PIER), 2005.


Benjamin Minge Duggar

As a specialist in botany, he held various positions in experiment stations and colleges until 1901, when he was appointed physiologist in the Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, for which he wrote bulletins.

Boysenberry

In the late 1920s, George M. Darrow of the USDA began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown on Boysen's Northern California farm.

Chris Swedzinski

He served as a district representative for former U.S. Representative Mark Kennedy for five years, and also worked as a Rural Development Specialist for the United States Department of Agriculture, designing and facilitating outreach plans and strategies for rural businesses and renewable energy efforts.

Continuous inspection

Continuous inspection (carcass-by-carcass inspection) is the USDA’s meat and poultry inspection system, called "continuous" because no animal destined for human food may be slaughtered or dressed unless an inspector is continuously present.

Fat content of milk

In 1911, the American Dairy Science Association's Committee on Official Methods of Testing Milk and Cream for Butterfat met in Washington DC with the U.S. Bureau of Dairying, the U.S. Bureau of Standards and manufacturers of glassware.

Federal Plant Pest Act of 1957

The Federal Plant Pest Act of 1957 (P.L. 85-36) prohibited the movement of pests from a foreign country into or through the United States unless authorized by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Food code

Contributors to the development of the Food Code are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture.

Harvey Washington Wiley

Wiley was offered the position of Chief Chemist in the United States Department of Agriculture by George Loring, the Commissioner of Agriculture, in 1882.

Hydraulic head

Pascal first qualitatively observed these effects in the 17th century, and they were more rigorously described by the soil physicist Edgar Buckingham (working for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)) using air flow models in 1907.

Joseph Y. Resnick

Resnick played a central role in passing the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which empowered the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to protect and regulate the use of animals in research facilities.

Kevin's Law

Requiring the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to identify the pathogens that threaten human health (e.g. Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes).

Organic certification

Certification is handled by state, non-profit and private agencies that have been approved by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Shooting of Hosie Miller

News of the incident received publicity in July, 2010 after Miller's daughter, Shirley Sherrod, revealed her version of the events shortly after the controversy surrounding her resignation as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture.

Soil test

: National Soil Survey Center, Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012.

Steneotarsonemus spinki

On July 13, 2007, the United States Department of Agriculture confirmed the presence the panicle rice mite at a rice research facility in Alvin, Brazoria County, Texas.

Sunbutter

Beginning in 2000, in cooperation with the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, SunGold Foods’ parent company, Red River Commodities, began a two-year project to develop a substitute for peanut butter that would be made from sunflower seeds.

Thomcord

Thomcord was developed in 1983 by Californian grape breeders working for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), as part of a test to better understand a new seedless grape breeding procedure.

United States House Agriculture Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, and Nutrition

The subcommittee is responsible for oversight, review, analysis, and special investigations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture along with nutrition and consumer programs such as the federal food stamp program, which provides assistance to needy families and the Food Pyramid.

United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies

This subcommittee has jurisdiction over the budget for the United States Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, and the Food and Drug Administration.

William Henry Anderson

During the same year he became a member of the United States Department of Agriculture, his job was there as a field assistant, and at the same time he worked with the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine.