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 Erik Spain

A few weeks ago my wife Secily and I took a trip to Chicago to celebrate our anniversary and it reminded me how lucky I was to be a West Texas farm kid.

We were taken aback by the beauty and architectural magnificence of the many skyscrapers. While examining the city’s great history and beauty, we wandered in and out of shops. I noticed many kids and teenagers hanging out in a mall as if that was the cool thing to do.

And I started to think how different my life would have been if I had spent my youth engulfed by consumerism and artificial happiness.

By John Paul Dineen III

My family is in the business of agriculture, helping to feed the people of our state, nation and world. I farm and ranch full time on the Blacklands of North Central Texas.  My wife, Heather, and I and our four children call Ellis County home, where we farm 1,800 acres of dryland crops. We also have a small commercial cow-calf operation.

Texas Food Connection Week, Feb. 17 -23, is being celebrated across the Lone Star State. I would like to talk with you about how we grow that food and the steps we take to ensure that food is safe, wholesome and nutritious.

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.