Trump to meet Elsa Murano, ‘a candidate’ for agriculture secretary
Cuban-born Elsa Murano, the top USDA meat safety official during the Bush era and later president of Texas A&M university, will meet President-elect Donald Trump next week as a candidate for agriculture secretary, said the Trump transition team. She would be the first person to meet Trump in nearly a month as a potential USDA nominee and could become the first Texan to lead the department.
As cattle numbers drop, livestock auction barns close
Texas lost nearly two livestock auction markets a year over the past four decades, according to a study by Texas A&M economists.
Sugarcane aphid, voracious sorghum pest, heads northward
"It sounds like the plot of a cheesy 1950s sci-fi movie," says Delta Farm Press in a story about the rapid spread of the sugarcane aphid, which can cause huge losses in sorghum yields.
The tussle over agricultural analysis money
Politico writes about the internecine scuffles among the nation's land grant universities and their think tanks for federal money to carry out analytical work.