$42 million budget on tap for coming year.

The 2011 wheat crop has resulted in mainly low yields as harvest winds down for another season throughout the Lone Star State. Because of extreme drought conditions, the Kasberg Grain Co. in Miles, 73 miles southwest of Abilene, handled approximately 25 percent of normal volume compared with years with adequate rainfall.

New Mexico State University is partnering with Texas A&M and other universities across the country on a $9.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to research bovine respiratory disease and how to reduce its prevalence in beef and dairy cattle.

Texas’ farmers and ranchers are coping with their eighth drought in the last 13 years, and this one, while still young, has a chance of slamming producers with their biggest losses ever, officials said.

The Agriculture Department would be barred, under language in a House appropriations bill, from proceeding with proposed marketing regulations opposed by major meatpackers and livestock trade groups.The House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee approved the draft fiscal 2012 spending bill, including the provision, by voice vote on Tuesday. The bill would provide $17.3 billion in discretionary funds to the Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and related agencies, a $2.6 billion cut from fiscal 2011. The measure also includes $108 billion in mandatory funding, almost 3 percent more than in fiscal 2011.The policy rider would bar the Agriculture Department’s Grain Inspection Stockyard and Packers Administration (GIPSA) from producing a regulation requiring meatpackers to report and justify pricing agreements with livestock producers. The proposed rule, unveiled last year, was written in response to a 2008 farm law (PL 110-246) directive to review marketing and competition issues in the livestock industry.

This lightweight, compact 24-row planter and applicator leave no tracks—and they don’t hog the road.