| AUSTIN, Texas Bush to meet with farm leaders Friday
(Reuters) - Two days after nominating the first woman to be U.S.
agriculture secretary, President-elect (George W.) Bush will sit down with
farm leaders to discuss his agricultural agenda, the Bush team said
Thursday.
Bush and Agriculture Secretary-designee Ann Veneman will meet with
leaders from the cotton, corn, wheat, soybean, rice, sugar, dairy, beef,
pork and fruit and vegetable industries and state secretaries of
agriculture from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Tennessee, Michigan,
Texas and Ohio.
Clayton Yeutter, who served as agriculture secretary for the first two
years of Bush's father's administration, will also take part in the talks
Friday.
For Veneman, a former director of California's agriculture department,
it will be an opportunity to meet with others who had been mentioned for
the agriculture secretary job and could yet get a position in the
department.
Those include Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs and Missouri
Farm Bureau President Charles Kruse.
Veneman, who rose to deputy agriculture secretary during the previous
Bush administration, has been greeted with praise from commodity groups
since her nomination Wednesday. |