By Mike Barnett

Total devastation visited Fleming Grain and Cattle Company Thursday evening. The storms that rolled through Texas that day damaged and destroyed thousands of acres of corn and wheat on several farms in Bell and Falls counties and other parts of the state as well.

The year started with promise for farmers like Robert Fleming. His crops looked good. It was a bit dry, however, and he was optimistic for the moisture Thursday’s cold front would bring. He didn’t bargain for the pea-sized hail driven by straight-line winds that peppered the crops like a mini-machine gun.

By Si Cook

TFB Organization Director

I was in South Texas the last weekend in April trying to accomplish a week’s worth of ranch work in one day. On Saturday, my time was cut short by a strange and wonderful event–a three-and-a-half inch rain!

By Billy Howe
TFB State Legislative Director

Every session of the Texas Legislature, bills are filed to provide more state oversight of groundwater management. This session is no exception.

Water marketers and water supply entities come to Austin and tell their stories of how they have been mistreated by local districts, or how the policies of the district don’t recognize the realities of building multi-million dollar water projects.

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

The Obama Administration is again making noises on regulating climate change and, as usual, some are selling it as a crisis.

 In talking with farmers and ranchers who have been on the land for multiple generations, I’ve seen a reluctance to agree that droughts should be blamed on manmade activity. Their family history reports many droughts, some more severe than the current batch. Farmers are also suspicious that they will be the first to feel the pinch of aggressive efforts to regulate carbon emissions. There is something to that. Great strides have been made with conservation tillage and no-till, but very few have found a way to produce a crop without driving across a field.

By Mike Barnett

The Legislature took a significant step last week toward meeting Texas’ future water needs as the House Committee on Natural Resources passed a bill to jump start water projects in Texas, as reported in Texas Farm Bureau’s Austin Newsletter.

 The multi-year drought that caused over $7.6 billion in agricultural losses in 2011 alone and is drying up water sources for many Texas towns and cities has drawn the attention of our lawmakers in Austin. HB 4 by Representative Allan Ritter (R-Nederland) proposes that $2 billion be used from the Rainy Day Fund to create a revolving loan program so communities can begin working on projects outlined in the State Water Plan.