NCGA Welcomes McKinney Nomination At USDA

Jul 21, 2017

The following is a statement from the National Corn Growers Association on Indiana Agriculture Director Ted McKinney’s nomination for Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a new post created under the 2014 Farm Bill.

“Congratulations to Ted McKinney on being named Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs. NCGA has long advocated for a dedicated position at USDA focused on increasing global demand for U.S. agriculture, and pushed for this in the last farm bill. We thank the Trump Administration for listening, and continuing to move that process forward. Trade is more important than ever for farmers to overcome this challenging farm economy.

“Mr. McKinney is an excellent choice to fill this new role. He has a longstanding record of service to the agriculture industry, and will be a strong advocate for U.S. agriculture on the global stage. We urge the Senate to move quickly to confirm him, so that our industry is in the best position to capitalize on increased global demand for our products.”

“We also thank the Administration for heeding our call for a full leadership team at USDA, making several appointments in the last week. We urge that process to continue. There is much work to be done, and we are eager to work together to build a stronger farm economy and move agriculture forward.”

Source: National Corn Growers Association

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.