Lyon County

Lyon County is the name of five counties in the United States:

Lyon

Lyon or Lyons (UK /liːˈɒn/ or /ˈliːɒn/;French pronunciation: [ljɔ̃], locally: [lijɔ̃]; Arpitan: Liyon [ʎjɔ̃]) is a city in east-central France, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. The correct spelling in French is Lyon, but the spelling Lyons is sometimes specified in English, particularly in newspaper style guides. Lyon is located about 470 km (292 mi) from Paris, 320 km (199 mi) from Marseille, 420 km (261 mi) from Strasbourg, 160 km (99 mi) from Geneva, and 280 km (174 mi) from Turin. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais.

The municipality (commune) of Lyon has a population of 500,715 (2013) and is France's third-largest city after Paris and Marseille. Lyon is the seat of the metropolis of Lyon, and the capital of both the department of Rhône and the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The greater metropolitan area of Lyon, a concept for statistical purposes that is not an administrative division, has a population of 2,214,068 (2012), which makes it the second-largest metropolitan area in France after Île-de-France (Paris).

County

A county, abbreviated Cnty. (US) or Co. (UK and Ireland), is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes, in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count (earl) or a viscount. The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, Gau, etc. (cf. conte, comte, conde, Graf).

When the Normans conquered England, they brought the term with them. The Saxons had already established the districts that became the historic counties of England, calling them shires (many county names derive from the name of the county town with the word "shire" added on: for example, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire). The Vikings introduced the term earl (from Old Norse, jarl) to the British Isles. Thus, "earl" and "earldom" were taken as equivalent to the continental use of "count" and "county". So the later-imported term became a synonym for the native English word scir ([ʃiːr]) or, in Modern English, shire. Since a shire was an administrative division of the kingdom, the term "county" evolved to designate an administrative division of national government in most modern uses.

Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service

The Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), part of the executive branch of the federal government. The 1994 Department Reorganization Act, passed by Congress, created CSREES by combining the former Cooperative State Research Service and the Extension Service into a single agency. Colien Hefferan currently serves as the agency's Administrator.

In 2009, CSREES was reorganized into the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Mission

CSREES' mission is to "advance agriculture, the environment, human health and well-being, and communities" by supporting research, education, and extension programs at land-grant universities and other organizations it partners with. CSREES doesn't conduct its own research; it provides funding and leadership to land-grant universities and competitively granted awards to researchers in partner organizations. CSREES' areas of involvement span across 60 programs in the biological, physical, and social sciences related to agricultural research, economic analysis, statistics, extension, and higher education.