Editor's Roundup
USDA people in the news

George Arredondo was named as associate administrator for operations and management in the Farm Service Agency. He succeeded Jim Kearney, who held that position from January 1999 until November 1999, when he was appointed administrator of the Rural Housing Service.

From August 1998 until his appointment in March 2000, Arredondo served as FSA’s state executive director for Arizona, based in Phoenix. He worked as an FSA farm loan officer in Phoenix from 1997-98, after having served as the agency’s county executive director for Cochise County, Ariz., based in Willcox, Ariz., from 1994-97.

Arredondo worked as an agricultural program specialist and a project leader in FSA’s Cotton, Grain, and Rice Division at the agency’s headquarters office in Washington, DC in 1994. From 1993-94 he served as an assistant team leader for FSA’s Business Process Analysis Team, after having served as a functional expert with FSA’s Information Strategic Planning Team from 1992-93. He worked as an automation coordinator for the agency from 1989-90 in Phoenix, and as an agricultural program specialist from 1987- 89 and also from 1990-92, in Washington, DC. He began his career with USDA as a program assistant in Casa Grande, Ariz., in 1985.

A native of Coolidge, Ariz., where he grew up on a farm producing cotton, grains, and alfalfa, Arredondo studied agricultural business at Central Arizona College and business administration at the University of Phoenix.