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Inside this Issue Upcoming Events Volume 51, Number 25 Department of Agricultural Economics Texas A&M University July 29, 2016 Rosson’s Roundup Rosson’s Roundup Upcoming Birthdays New Publications Aggies in France Position Announcements July 30th-August 2-AAEA Annual Meeting August 12th Graduation Congratulations to Jason Johnson and Tiffany Dowell Lashmet for being recognized by the County Agents across the state. Jason received the District 8 Distinguished Specialist Award at the 2016 Texas County Agricultural Agents Association at their annual meeting on July 18. Tiffany received the Distinguished State Specialist Award at the same meeting. Congratulations to both of you on a great job! This week, Patrick Williams and I traveled to Kerrville to visit with Doris Kensing ’70, whose husband, Robert passed away earlier this year. We presented Doris with a plaque honoring their contribution to our scholarship fund and a lapel pin that was Robert’s and was designed to recognize our Tyrus R. Timm Honor Registry members. We also traveled to San Antonio and met with Brian Weiner ’65, a Ty Timm Honor Registry member, to thank him for starting our International Excellence Endowment which will begin to support our students next year. The Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meetings begin tomorrow in Boston. I’m attending and moderating a panel at the ‘Big Data’ pre-conference workshop on Saturday, and looking forward to learning about the dimensions of big data and how others are handling some of the more thorny issues related to privacy and security. I’m also on a panel about Cuba Tuesday afternoon, so that should be interesting as well. I hope to see many of you at the meetings. Have a great weekend! 2016 France Agribusiness study abroad program took place between May 25 and June 25, with 15 Aggies participating. The program has been offered by the Department in conjunction with partner school, Ecole Superieur d’Agriculture (ESA), for more than 10 years. This year, the program started in Paris where Aggies joined with several groups from other US universities and spent three days touring the French capital and learning about its rich history and culture. The highlights included visiting Notre Dame de Paris and Louvre, climbing Eiffel tower, as well as a trip to Rungis International Food Market, which is the largest wholesale market for fresh food products in Europe. The students then spent three weeks in the city of Angers located in Northwestern France. Here they stayed with host families and attended classes at ESA learning about French agricultural production and importance of sustainable agricultural practices for French producers and consumers. The students also had several practical sessions such as bread making, cheese tasting, and (the toughest of them all) wine tasting. In addition to classroom experience, the students visited several farms and agribusinesses including organic milk farm, a sheep farm, two cheese factories, two vineyards, a wine cooperative, and a pork processing plant. The visits provided a one-of-a-kind experience allowing students to learn about the specifics of production and unique features of each company. It turns out that the meat of sheep grazing on the meadows periodically flooded by the tides acquire a very specific and unique taste, that the camembert cheese made out of raw organic milk does taste different from the one sold at H-E-B, and that, contrary to popular belief, seeing how the sausage is made may positively contribute to the taste of the final product. The program also included cultural trips to several castles along the Loire river, the walled city of St Malo in Britany, the monastery of Mont St. Michel, the city of Nantes, and the WWII sites in Normandy. Staying with the host families was another unique component of cultural experience, with the students learning firsthand about the daily life of a French family and the finer points of French cooking. Despite a few curveballs we had to dodge this year (a wave of strikes, Euro 2016 soccer cup, and torrential rains than inundated France), the program was a resounding success. The students had a fantastic experience and returned home with the memories that will last a lifetime. I am looking forward to the 2017 program and will start recruitment in early September. ~Dmitry Vedenov Front: Anne-Marie Wolff, Anna Dement, Claire Wilson, Charlotte Hammer, Allie Andersen, Alyze Dominguez, Anna Schmidt, & Haley Crocombe Back: Corey Parish, Hunter Patterson, Leonel Mendez, Eliott Condos, Forrest Magee, Chris Burger, & Henry Nelson
