Department of Agriculture Nomination of John C. White To Be Deputy Secretary.

The President today announced that he will nominate John C. White to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. White is presently Texas commissioner of agriculture.

White was born on November 28, 1924, on a tenant farm near Newport, in Clay County, Tex. He attended rural schools, and in 1946 he received a B.S. degree in agriculture from Texas Tech University.

For many years, he maintained a working interest in the family farm, purchased by his father with one of the first Farm Security Administration loans in 1937. He now operates a small cattle farm in central Texas.

Between 1947 and 1950, White was a teacher of veterans vocational agriculture in north central Texas, and then managed farms and taught agricultural courses at Midwestern University, Wichita Falls, Tex.

In 1950 White was elected Texas commissioner of agriculture, defeating a field of five candidates, including the incumbent, who had held the office for 20 years. He has since been reelected 13 times.

As agriculture commissioner in Texas, White was responsible for ongoing reorganization of the department, the first cooperative effort with Mexican officials on control of cotton insect pests, encouragement of State legislation for the registration and analysis of potentially hazardous agricultural chemicals, and the creation of a consumer protection and services division in the department. He also inaugurated the Texas Agricultural Projects (TAP) project, a worldwide marketing program.

White was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1960 and 1964. He served on the executive committee of the Democratic Charter Commission in 1974 and was chairman of the Texas delegation to the 1974 mini-convention.

In 1963 White headed the task force that negotiated the "chicken war" with the European Community under President Kennedy. He was President Johnson's representative to the Turkey and Yugoslavia Trade Conference in 1964. In 1967 he traveled to Vietnam as a special adviser with a program establishing a self-sustaining food production program for Southeast Asia.

White is married, and he and his wife have five children. They reside in Austin, Tex.