Dear Farmer,

As a loyal customer, I am grateful for you and the other Texas farmers and ranchers who grow the fruits, vegetables, meat and other products that I buy and serve to my family. Each week, I know the shelves at my local grocery store will be stocked with a large variety of products with plenty of price, flavor and nutrition choices.

By Gene Hall

As I write my contribution to Texas Agriculture Talks this week, I’m watching The Food Dialogs. This is a massive coast-to-coast webcast sponsored by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance to bring farmers, ranchers, food experts and consumers together for a discussion of how food is grown and brought from farm to plate. Texas Farm Bureau is a member of USFRA.

It is an article of faith among farmers and ranchers that consumers don’t really know much about their food supply. In this, they appear to be correct. Prior to this hopefully helpful effort, a nationwide survey delved into the question of how consumers and farmers regard one another, how much consumers know about their food supply and what opinions they hold about their food.

By Mike Barnett
I have a double-dose of fed up. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), as well as other animal rights groups, continue to mislead the public on animal abuse and food safety with today’s release of an undercover video of an egg production facility in Texas.

On one hand I’m sick of those bad players in the livestock industry who mistreat their animals.  On the other, I’m sick of the animal rights activist groups who promote these isolated incidents as an indictment of the entire meat and egg industry.

By Mike Barnett

How small is too large?

That’s a loaded question, especially when you talk about risk and benefit as it relates to the food we eat.

It often gets dicey when conversation turns to pesticides and food safety and someone starts spouting numbers. And it’s no real help to know how much or how little a unit of measurement is.

For example one-part-per-million can be described as one drop of food dye in 16 gallons of water. 500 parts-per-million of one pesticide may be harmless. Yet 500 parts-per-million for a different pesticide may be deadly.