Manhattan ? The director of the U.S. Agriculture Department agency that oversees fair and competitive trading is headlining this year’s annual meeting of the Kansas Farmers Union in Manhattan.

Kansas Farmers Union has more than 20 speakers on tap for a three-day event it calls “Thinking Outside The Box” that begins Thursday in Manhattan.

Among the headliners is Larry Mitchell, director of USDA’s Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration. He is expected to speak Friday on how his agency’s programs impact the livestock and grain markets. He is also expected to provide his insights into those sectors of the agriculture economy.

His agency’s Packers and Stockyards Program is responsible for fostering fair competition and investigating deceptive trade practices that affect the movement and price of meat animals. Its Federal Grain Inspection Service established quality standards and regulates grain handling practices.

Also on tap for the convention is National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson, whose presentation includes a “visual journey” beginning from the Neolithic dawn of agriculture to today’s global farmers with a view to the challenges of feeding the people across the planet through 2050. His presentation seeks to answer the question of how to feed 9 billion people when 40 percent of the world’s surface is already in agriculture production.

Other convention topics include agricultural advocacy, history, new farming practices, farm succession and cooperatives.

Then on Saturday the Kansas Beginning Farmers Coalition, which is holding its meeting in conjunction with the Farmers Union convention, will host sessions geared toward beginning farmers and ranchers.

They are bringing in as their speaker Cody Holmes, a Norwood, Missouri, farmer whose family raises seasonal produce and free range-chicken, pork, beef, lamb, turkey, eggs, cheese and milk without the use of antibiotics and chemicals. He is the author of “Ranching Full-Time on Three Hours a Day.”