News Update

April 26, 2017

Sonny Perdue Sworn in as 31st U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

Sonny Perdue was sworn in as the 31st U.S. Secretary of Agriculture by fellow Georgian and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas in a brief ceremony April 25 at the Supreme Court building.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Secretary Perdue by a vote of 87-to-11 on Monday evening. After Secretary Perdue took the oath of office, he addressed employees at the USDA before getting to work on his first day. Also this morning, USDA launched his official Twitter handle: @SecretarySonny.

“The only legacy that I seek is the only one that any grandparent or parent seeks — to be good stewards, and to hand off our nation, our home, our fields, our forests and our farms to the next generation in better shape than we found it,” Perdue said.

View the full USDA news release online.

— Adapted from a release by the USDA.

Auxiliary Hosts Second Annual Fundraiser

The American Angus Auxiliary is proud to present the second-annual Full Circle Online Auction, a national Angus consignment sale.

The Full Circle Online Auction is a web-based consignment market that offers Angus breeders, families and allied industry the opportunity to both sell and buy, while making a substantial contribution to help ensure the sustainability of the Auxiliary’s ongoing support of the Angus breed and its youth.

The online auction will take place September 27-28 and is hosted by www.AngusLive.com. Proceeds will support the Auxiliary’s mission, including breed promotion, beef education and youth development through programs, awards and scholarships.

The Auxiliary is currently seeking a wide variety of items with a fair market value in excess of $100. Auction categories include Angus memorabilia/collectibles, games/toys, vacation packages, home décor, cattle services, embryo/semen packages and other useful items. Consignments received by June 1 will receive 90 days of advertising including an ad in the Angus Journal.

Continue reading this Angus news release online.

— Adapted from a release by the American Angus Auxiliary.

Full Circle Improvement

The more you know and data you have available, the faster you can improve cattle genetics. And when seedstock producers work together with their commercial customers, that forward momentum carries even further.

On the Schiefelbein farm near Kimball, Minn., they offer a feeder-calf buy-back program, where customers gain more than added value on sale day. They also gain valuable insight through carcass data, explains Tim Schiefelbein.

“At Schiefelbein Farms, what we do is we sell the bulls to the commercial cattlemen. We have a slogan. ‘You buy the bulls, we bid on your calves.’ And by us bidding on those calves, and buying quite a few of them, we buy about 25,000 a year, it helps increase their value where they can see it right in front of them. And then on top of that we track the cattle through, we capture the data, and we know how to even make the cattle better.”

Watch this week’s The Angus Report online to learn more. You can also catch the show at 1:30 p.m. CDT Saturday and 7:30 a.m. CDT each Monday morning on RFD-TV.

— Adapted from The Angus Report.

AFBF’s President Duvall Joins in
Historic White House Ag Roundtable

During a meeting with farmers and ranchers, President Donald Trump pledged April 25 that his administration, including newly installed Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, would work to address critical challenges faced by agriculture, according to American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) President Zippy Duvall.

Duvall was among 14 farmers and ranchers from across the country who met at the White House with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Perdue for a roundtable discussion. The meeting, hosted on the day Perdue was sworn into office, included a discussion on pressing issues for American agriculture, such as trade, labor, regulatory reform and rural infrastructure.

“Not only was President Trump receptive to our concerns, but he pledged action,” Duvall said. “He even looked toward Secretary Perdue and said, ‘Let’s get these problems fixed.’”

For more information, read the AFBF news release online.

— Adapted from a release by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Millennials: Pulling Back the Curtain

Ashley Collins, director of college relations with Agriculture Future of America (AFA), was a recent guest on Angus Talk, a weekly radio program on Rural Radio, Channel 147. Tune in at 10 a.m. CDT each Saturday morning on SiriusXM Radio.

Q: Who is considered a Millennial?
A: There’s a couple different definitions out there, depending on what research you’re using. For the sake of today’s interview, we’ll define them as people who were born in the early 1980s, to the early 2000s. Myself for an example, I was born in 1982, so now you can do the math, and date me, and age me. I would say that I fall, by most definitions, into that Millennial category.
Q: How many Millennials are there in the workforce? How many are working in agriculture?
A: As far as the workforce is considered, the most recent analysis of the 2015 Census Bureau data says that more than one in three American workers today are Millennials. They have surpassed Generation X, which is the generation before them, those born between 1960 and 1980, to become the largest sharer of the American workforce.

Read more of the interview in the Angus Media news article online.

— Adapted from a release by Doug Medlock, Angus Media.

— Compiled by Paige Nelson, field editor, Angus Media.