Two years after President Abraham Lincoln created the Department of Agriculture in 1862, he nicknamed it “the people’s department” because half of all Americans lived on farms at that time. Today, fewer than 2% of Americans farm, but the Agriculture Department still touches people’s lives in many ways.

The modern U.S. Department of Agriculture is a sprawling bureaucracy with a US$231 billion annual budget. Although it is headquartered in Washington, D.C., about 90% of its employees work in field offices nationwide. Others serve in nearly 100 embassies around the world as part of the Foreign Agriculture Service, promoting U.S. food and farm products.