SCOUTING REPORT | SDSU’s agriculture triumph, seducing flies, congressional social influencers
A weekly digest of interesting local, state, national and even international developments
South Dakota State University is celebrating one of its great agriculture pioneers, Edgar McFadden. He is, according to the state’s land grant university, the father of one of the most consequential successes in modern agriculture – a hybrid wheat variety that conquered a common blight on the species.
Like so many success stories of his era, McFadden lays waste to the notion that individual achievement among the disadvantaged is not possible. He was 13 when he had to take control of the family farm near Webster after his father was gored by a bull. His golden wheat fields proved promising until, days before harvest, the stems broke and kernels shriveled as stem rust infected the crop.
