The following excerpt is from President Kenneth Dierschke’s address to convention delegates during TFB’s 77th annual meeting Dec. 5 in Waco.
For the Texas Farm Bureau—for the people who grow our food—this is a crucial time.

It is a time of potential danger and enormous expectations, a time of great challenge and potential reward. It is a time to harvest that which has been sown by generations of our members and leaders. 

This is Texas Farm Bureau’s time—if we have the will to make it happen.

By Mike Barnett
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure—except when it comes to Texas property laws.

Old Ben Franklin was referring to fire fighting when he wrote this sage advice back in the 1700s. My corruption of Mr. Franklin’s idea refers today to the sorry state of Texas eminent domain laws.

Voters overwhelmingly blessed an ounce of prevention last year with the passage of a Constitutional amendment backed by Texas Farm Bureau  which stops the government from taking private property to give to another entity for the primary purpose of economic development or enhance tax revenue.

By Gene Hall

Texas’ reputation as a private property rights state is somewhat overrated. Some of our political leaders talk about it a lot, but our failure to address eminent domain reform in a meaningful way is proof enough that we are not what some claim we are. Still, Texans undeniably care about property rights. That is the reason there is real hope that we break through the entrenched interests that like eminent domain the way it is. 

By Mike Barnett

We’re all aware of the financial toll of unfair eminent domain laws in the Lone Star State. Horror stories abound of sweet arrangements dealing raw hands to landowners when Texas laws deem property can be taken for the public good. What is rarely told is the human toll these archaic laws can extract.

 By Mike Barnett

Okay, Texas Farm Bureau’s AGFUND endorsed candidate for governor lost the Republican primary. It was a huge disappointment for those who worked so hard to see Kay Bailey Hutchison heading our state government in Austin.

But as my blog writing partner Gene Hall said, the sun did come up on Wednesday morning. The birds sang. And life goes on. As does Texas Farm Bureau’s efforts to achieve true eminent domain reform.