The U.S. Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative (UWBSI) launched a new Web site this week to provide producers with information on how to manage Fusarium head blight, commonly known as scab.

USDA announced this week that President Barack Obama has appointed Dr. Roger Beachy as the first director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a new research agency created under the 2008 Farm Bill.

House and Senate activity this week was largely focused on pending appropriations bills, with the federal government’s fiscal year set to end on Wednesday.

A potential amendment to the interior appropriations bill became a proxy war for the climate change debate this week in the Senate.

NAWG and U.S. Wheat Associates submitted comments this week to the Office of the United States Trade Representative emphasizing the importance of a pending free trade agreement with Colombia to the wheat industry and wheat producers.

Biotechnology has the potential to help reverse the loss of wheat acres in the United States and help ensure there will be adequate supplies to feed a hungry world. That is the conclusion of a new wheat industry analysis released Thursday.

Along with others in the agricultural industry around the world, NAWG leaders have mourned this week the loss of Dr. Norman Borlaug on Saturday at the age of 95.

In the midst of volatile markets and the daily economic battles, it can be very easy to overlook one significant benefit that the market is now offering all wheat buyers: the best landed-cost value for wheat the world has seen in several years.

A Senatorial game of musical chairs this week resulted in one of the fiercest proponents of production agriculture, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), becoming the new chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

The latest edition of USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report, released Friday, sees few upside factors that might affect wheat prices but also sees no major downside surprise, due in large part to an abundance of wheat on the world market.

NAWG CEO Daren Coppock and eight other board members of the National Coalition for Agricultural Research (NC-FAR) met with USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics (REE) Rajiv Shah and Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young last Friday, taking a first step toward renewed and strengthened collaboration between the agriculture community and the REE mission area at USDA.

Wheat growers and other agricultural representatives met with leaders of the BNSF Railway this week at the latest meeting of the Ag Rail Business Council.

The NAWG Board of Directors met by conference call Friday to discuss pending climate change legislation and, as part of that discussion, the Board voted 26 to two to approve a new resolution regarding greenhouse gas regulation.

The fifth season of America’s Heartland is set to kick off on many public TV stations and RFD-TV the week of Sept. 6.