By Gene Hall

Organic. Conventional. Natural. Modern. Local. Grassfed. Grainfed. The choices are endless for consumers when it comes to food and the farmers and ranchers who grow it.

Confusion often reigns as some with evangelical zeal turn up their noses at how you like to eat. Scare tactics are used by everyone from multi-billion-dollar corporations like Chipotle, fond of slamming modern agriculture in their marketing efforts, to animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the United States with their vegan agenda, to scores of individuals who use the Internet as a platform to advance some flavor of the month cause.

By Gene Hall

A friend pointed out recently that a comic named Pete Holmes took a cheap shot at farmers. He blames them for Daylight Saving Time (DST) and acts out a few unfortunate caricatures.

I won’t post the link because we have rules about certain language here. I’m not trying to be judgmental. It was humor, not history, but our rules are what they are. The clip is easy enough to find on YouTube.

This guy is not the first and won’t be the last to sucker punch the reputation of farmers and ranchers. Hey, that sums up Chipotle’s marketing plan. I don’t want to overreact, but farmers aren’t responsible for Daylight Saving Time.

By Mike Barnett

Big Brother is watching the farm and his name is EPA.

In this age of free-flowing information, when most anything can be found in cyberspace, it’s a little disconcerting that government knows the most intimate details of your family, finances and business. It’s downright alarming when they release that information to those who might do you harm.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released personal information about thousands of livestock and poultry farmers and ranchers in 20 states in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from three environmental organizations. The massive data release included home phone numbers, home emails, employee contact information, home addresses, GPS coordinates and, in some cases, personal notes about the families, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).

By Gene Hall

I am a big fan of Dr. Thomas Sowell, a free market economist, except when he starts talking about agricultural labor and immigration reform.

Dr. Sowell’s support of the free market is something I appreciate most of the time. His latest article, however, challenging a “need” for workers in agriculture, has missed the target. He wrote that we don’t need immigration reform and a guest worker program for agriculture. In his opinion, paying more for labor will get you plenty of American workers.

By Si Cook

TFB Organization Director

I was in South Texas the last weekend in April trying to accomplish a week’s worth of ranch work in one day. On Saturday, my time was cut short by a strange and wonderful event–a three-and-a-half inch rain!