By Gary Joiner

Texas farmers purchase crop insurance to protect against losses in the field. It’s a critical management tool.

But there’s also risk after harvest. At the first point of sale. If a grain buyer fails to pay the farmer due to bankruptcy or theft of grain, the grower is left holding the bag.

A great solution to manage this risk is the Texas Grain Producer Indemnity Fund. The program mitigates 85 percent of the financial losses suffered by growers of corn, sorghum, soybeans and wheat when grain buyers fail to pay for grain.

By Russell Boening

These are excerpts from President Russell Boening’s address at the organization’s 82nd annual meeting in Arlington.

Texas Farm Bureau has demonstrated the ability to unite the farm and ranch families of Texas, in effect creating another kind of family—a people united by a common bond of belief and of mutual interest.

You’ve witnessed the organization working for Texas agriculture and many of you have been part of that.

We strengthened eminent domain laws. We’ve come a long way, but there is more to be done.

An editorial cartoon recently printed by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times implied that as the result of the new farm bill, those who need assistance with food are starving to death while farmers get fat off subsidies. Nueces County Farm Bureau President Scott Frazier took offense and submitted the following letter to the editor in response. We thought we would share it with you.

By Scott Frazier

The American Gothic Revised cartoon printed on the editorial page of Monday’s paper is offensive to two very diverse groups of your readers.

By Gene Hall

What was expected to be the 2012 Farm Bill has been passed this week in the House and awaits action in the Senate. A bitter political battle has pushed the bill all the way to 2014. Farmers, who have a real stake in all this, would like for the rest of us to know why it’s so important.

Opposition to farm legislation usually boils down to very conservative folks who want a pure application of a free market or environmental activists who want farm practices dramatically changed. We could do the former but our food would very likely come mostly from countries with very cheap labor and food safety regulations we probably wouldn’t like. On the latter, we continue to make significant progress.

By Gene Hall

The farm bill should be an easy vote, easily explained back home.

There is not any jobs bill on which Congress could vote that will sustain more jobs than a farm bill. These jobs range from the farm gate to port cities. From truck terminals and railheads to hometown grocery stores, jobs are the legacy of farm bill legislation. There are jobs in urban centers and jobs in small farm towns—jobs dependent on farming.