By Gene Hall

Last week I was in Washington, D.C., and had the pleasure of interviewing U.S. Representative John Carter, who represents the 31^st District of Texas. Congressman Carter, along with fellow Texas Congressman Sam Johnson, is working hard on the U.S. House version of an immigration reform bill for our country.

It takes some Texas-sized courage to stick your neck out on a heated issue like immigration reform in Congress. For agriculture, though, a legal guest worker program is the difference between harvested crops and lost opportunity. No workers in the field… No crops from the field… No food for the people.

By Mike Barnett

The cost of dying would have been a lot higher on Jan. 1 if Congress hadn’t stepped in at the last minute and dealt with the estate tax—commonly known as the death tax in farm country.

The certainty of what was passed into law and signed by the president beats the disastrous consequences if Congress hadn’t acted. We were looking at a $1 million exemption with an onerous 55 percent tax rate for the beginning of the New Year. That placed a bull’s eye squarely on the backs of almost every Texas farmer and rancher and would have taxed their heirs out of business.

By Mike Barnett

Whew, I’m glad 2012 is over. Elections, drought, bickering in Washington, no farm bill. 2013 has to be better. Doesn’t it? Here are my fearless agriculture predictions for 2013.

January: Voters push Congress over a physical cliff because we’re just tired of it all.

February: Rains bring widespread smiles to farmers and ranchers across the Lone Star State.

March: Voters respond favorably to initiative in Midwest that requires Humane Society of the United States to spend 90 percent of their funds taking care of homeless animals.

By Gene Hall

President Obama has won re-election. Congratulations, Mr. President. On my Facebook page the past few days, I’ve been asking for some guidance, suggestions on how we might work together as a nation. This is the result.

Obviously some folks are still taking this hard, and winners gloat sometimes, especially in cyberspace. Fair enough, but we had better start thinking about how we can work together, and we are about out of time. I voted for the other guy, and I recognize the need for compromise. Part of that is supporting the president on some of what he wants and expecting to get something in return.

By Kenneth Dierschke

Everyone in agriculture knew there would be substantial cuts in the new Farm Bill. Most agricultural organizations had signaled that a “proportional cut” would be acceptable. We’ve realized that preserving the most essential element of the legislation—crop insurance—would be a realistic goal.

 Toward that end, the House Agriculture Committee had been working with what farmers believe is a realistic number–$23 billion in cuts to the commodity title of the farm program. Recently, the House Budget Committee threw out a new and completely unrealistic number of $30 billion in cuts. This is not a proportional number and it’s hard to imagine how we can come up with a workable crop insurance program within that budget framework.