ARS : RSS Feeds

USDA’s ARS is a leading source for U.S. agricultural research. We offer our most current information via RSS feeds. If you have a feed reader or news aggregator, you can click the links below to view our RSS feeds in your Web browser and to subscribe to future updates. (If you do not have a feed reader, the linked pages will not display properly.)

The rest of this page is a summary of RSS, what it does and how you can use it.

What is RSS?

RSS has several meanings: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary and RDF Site Summary (RDF stands for Resource Data Framework).

RSS is a method of summarizing the latest news and information from a Web site in a form that can be easily read by a news reader or news aggregator. RSS feeds give users the ability to quickly obtain morst current and recently updated content on a Web site in a headline or news digest format.

What do I need to use the RSS feeds?

To use our RSS feeds, you need a feed reader (aka news aggregator ) installed on your computer. These applications can be set to read the feeds on a recurring basis, generally once an hour or so.

Once you install the feed reader or news aggregator, you can simply add the feed addresses (URLs) to the list of feeds in the reader. The installation instructions for the readers will help you with that. If your news reader or aggregator uses "auto-discovery," simply enter the main site address (eg. http://ars.usda.gov) it will find the available feeds.

Technical Q&A

What version of RSS do we use?

Our feeds use the RSS 2.0 specification. The feeds give the date, time, title, and the link to the Web posting itself along with the actual text of the article.

Got more questions?

If you have problems, questions, or feedback regarding our RSS feeds, please send them to our webmaster.