By Gene Hall

It’s a curious coalition that always creeps out of the deep woods to oppose the farm bill, which, in one form or another has ensured U.S. supplies of food and fiber since the 1930s.

It’s sort of like an episode of The Walking Dead.  One group of zombies swoops in from the deep woods of the left, believing that attacking modern agriculture in their typical Luddite fashion will produce the environmental utopia of which they dream. 

By Gene Hall

Let me tell you about a young man I know. No, actually, the word is “admire.” His name is James D. Sartwelle IV. J.D. is a heck of a kid. His dad, Jim, and I work together here at Texas Farm Bureau. He’s been “raised right.” But that’s only part of the story.

J.D. is a product of that great character-building enterprise of showing livestock at a few of the hundreds of junior shows that are held across Texas every year.

By Darrell and Lindsey Bowers

As Texas Farm Bureau Vice President David Stubblefield gave this year’s Young Farmer & Rancher Committee its charge, we started thinking about its importance and the personal impact that our involvement in Farm Bureau has had on our life.

As we have become more involved and we have a greater understanding of the Young Farmer & Rancher program, we always come back to the same question: “Why is it so hard to get people involved?” And then we think back to when our district committee chair started working on us to get us involved and how long it took us to finally make it a priority.

By Mike Barnett

Get your back up. Mix it up and fight those who use agriculture as a whipping boy.

That was the battle plan advocated by American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman in 2010 during his annual address to the membership in Seattle. I dubbed him the Mad Prophet of Agriculture back then.

President Stallman has mellowed a bit. And so has the tune sung by the organization and others in battling the myths and lies perpetrated about what we do.

By Gene Hall
I have been encouraged in recent weeks that good, old-fashioned, provable science has been making a comeback in the debate over biotech foods and the food supply of the human race. The idea that science cannot be ignored in the race to feed our ever-increasing population may be catching on.

Altering genes to benefit humans is nothing new. It happens routinely in medicine with scarcely a notice. It’s been done since 1996 in our food supply with no ill effects. However, the comparison bogs down here with sometimes shrill and mostly wrong complaints about a biotech food supply.

The following post is a reprint of The Ag Agenda written by Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The New Year is upon us, which means many of you have probably made a New Year’s resolution or two. The funny thing about resolutions is that they are easier to make than to keep (I speak from experience). Come January 7, that piece of cheesecake typically wins out, while the elliptical machine is already starting to gather dust.