This week's highlights are: - Celebrating home ownership month
- Protecting birds and people
- Farmers Market season kicks off
BROADCASTERS: A split audio version without on-screen graphics is available on the USDA FTP site. Download instructions: The host: ftp://ocbmtcmedia.download.akamai.com/23747/TV_Features User name: usdaftp Password:1qaz2wsx Filename for TV Feature: TW@USDA Episode 31 June 13 SPLIT The new file is in QuickTime Movie Please use this free ftp client if you have problems. http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type+client Please email bob.ellison@usda.gov if you have problems or suggestions. Narrator (Bob Ellison): Celebrating home ownership month. Protecting birds and people. And farmers' market season kicks off. Those stories in This Week @ U-S-D-A.
Narrator: Helping rural families become homeowners is being celebrated by the Department of Agriculture this month. U-S-D-A Rural Development helps get loans to rural residents who might have trouble getting them otherwise.
Tony Hernandez, Administrator, USDA Rural Housing Service: We do three things at USDA. We give people hope for home ownership. We give them surprises because they know they can finally find a way to get there. And then we give them joy because we help them close the loan. So those three things…hope, surprise, and joy.
Narrator: In Twenty Thirteen, U-S-D-A helped more than one hundred seventy thousand rural residents become homeowners by investing over twenty three billion dollars in loans, grants, and technical assistance.
Narrator: U-S-D-A's work in protecting birds and people was honored with a presidential award for migratory bird stewardship. The award recognized U-S-D-A's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for reducing human and wildlife conflict while conserving migratory birds.
Dr. Jere Dick, USDA APHIS Associate Administrator: By being able to relocate them we're protecting the birds themselves, but we're also keeping them out of engines and things in airplanes so that they aren't brining down airplanes and risking public life.
Narrator: From Two Thousand Four to Two Thousand Thirteen, APHIS Wildlife Services live-trapped thirteen thousand seven hundred birds and moved them away from risky areas like airports.
Anne Alonzo, Administrator, USDA AMS: It's my distinct pleasure to open up officially the USDA nineteenth annual farmers market. (ringing bell)
Narrator: U-S-D-A's farmers market opened by honoring the seventieth anniversary of D-Day and paying special attention to military personnel.
Dr. Gregory Parham, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture: We are dedicating this opening of this U-S-D-A's farmers market to our veteran and uniformed services family.
Narrator: The Department is helping veterans get involved in agriculture with assistance from Farm Bill programs.
Michael O'Gorman, Founder/Director, Farmer-Veteran Coalition: What really appeals to the veterans is that continued sense of service, that continued sense of mission. Finding something that's just as meaningful to them as that which they went to do overseas.
Matt Soldano, U.S. Army Veteran/Farmer: There's a lack of good food in America, so now I provide a service where I can grow that good food for a living. So I'm still serving my country, just in a different manner.
Narrator: USDA's Outdoor Farmers Market is open Friday's from now through November Twenty First. That's all for This Week at U-S-D-A. Follow, tweet, and stay informed at U-S-D-A dot-gov. | 
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