As the Tuesday deadline for congressional agriculture leaders to submit a farm bill proposal nears, lobbying and letter writing is intensifying to the 12 members of the super committee and to what the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is calling “the Big 4” — Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Pat Roberts, R-Kans., House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn. Read More...

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan this week announced grants for specialty crop research and for the promotion of farmers markets. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today in Seattle that USDA has made five major grants totaling $136 million to university researchers to develop aviation biofuels from tall grasses, crop residues and forest resources. Read More...

Farmers and other agricultural leaders will have to get used to consumers, doctors and other activists becoming involved in agricultural policy, former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said in an interview with The Hagstrom Report. Read More...

Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., today introduced a bill to amend the tax code to allow for the creation of charitable, tax-exempt agricultural research organizations, similar to medical research organizations which have been in existence since the 1950s. Read More...

With the end of earmarks, the Agriculture Department may need to ask Congress for the kind of authority that the National Science Foundation has to initiate new research facilities on its own, Agriculture Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics Catherine Woteki said in a wide-ranging interview with The Hagstrom Report. Read More...

WICHITA, Kan. — Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and ranking member Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, both said here today that they are investigating how much Congress will cut farm programs under the debt-ceiling deficit reduction bill passed in August, but they indicated they will take different approaches. Read More...

AGree, the foundation-funded initiative on the 2012 farm bill, announced today that it has established a research committee composed mostly of academics to advise its leaders on agricultural research priorities. Read More...

A new $957 million agricultural research program to be announced Thursday by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research is designed to increase productivity in developing countries, but climate change may mean eventual implications for wheat and other crops in developed countries as well. Read More...

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., announced today that Agriculture subcommittees will hold two audit hearings on Agriculture Department programs next week. Read More...

PARIS — The wheat research initiative that the agriculture ministers from the G20 countries launched at their meeting here on June 23 is strongly supported by U.S. growers and appears likely to put wheat research on a faster track. Read More...

ROME — Farmers around the world should continue to get higher commodity prices in order to increase food production in future years, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in a lecture here today. Read More...

PARIS — In an attempt to reduce global food price volatility, the agriculture ministers from the G20 countries, including the United States, agreed today to launch a new wheat research initiative, convinced China and India to participate in a new food market supply and demand system, and released a proposal for a pilot project on humanitarian food reserves. But the group did not take a position opposing biofuels subsidies. Read More...

Scientists will fight wheat rust from a new state-of-the art Agriculture Department greenhouse at the University of Minnesota, but a key researcher says more money is needed if the fungal disease is to be fought successfully in Africa before it reaches North America. Read More...

Cuts in the fiscal year 2011 agriculture research budget are having “very severe” effects on Agriculture Department research activities, a USDA official said today. Read More...

National Institute of Food and Agriculture Director Roger Beachy has resigned, effective May 20, Agriculture Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics Cathie Woteki announced today in a message to her staff. Read More...

Members of Congress may have ended the practice of earmarking specific agricultural research and construction projects in their districts, but they are still writing to Agriculture Department officials to urge funding, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said Sunday. Read More...

With pressures on the agriculture budget mounting, the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology today released a report on the performance of publicly funded agricultural research. Read More...