United States Department of Agriculture

My name is Eugene Young and I am the Regional Director for USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service Delta Regional Office, which services the great states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Our regional office is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. Satellite offices are in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi. Our mission is to provide timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to our region's agriculture.

For me personally, I am a native Arkansan, raised in the very small town of Black Springs (population 114) nestled in the Ouachita Mountains of Southwest Arkansas. My family raised contract broilers and had a cow-calf operation. We worked hard but also enjoyed ourselves by hunting, fishing, and spending 100 degree summers putting up hay in a lofted barn and picking rocks out of the garden.

I attended the University of Arkansas to study agricultural business. I found college enjoyable enough to stay a couple more years to get my master's degree in agricultural economics. Farming and agriculture gave me everything I had ever gotten in life, so when I left home for college, choosing a major was a no-brainer. I was never going to leave the agriculture field. As I finished my master's degree, I was selected into a doctoral program at the University of Illinois, and interviewed with several organizations which resulted in job offers; one of those jobs was with USDA NASS.

I was very intrigued with the work NASS did, and I felt that it was a great fit for me and would allow me to give something back, to make a positive impact, and to devote my energies to make things better by providing quality marketplace estimates and ensuring the field was level for all players concerned with agriculture. It has been a very rewarding career, and I am blessed each day to be able to work in agriculture. Twenty-seven years later, I know I made the right choice.

Two of my favorite quotes that I strongly believe in:

"Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson

"Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man." - George Washington