By Chandler Bowers

As I am top dressing wheat with fertilizer and herbicide, I am reminded of the sacrifices that we all must make to keep the world revolving for generations to come.

There are lots of sacrifices made by farm families in order to keep their businesses profitable. Long hours, seasonal vacations, the unpredictability of Mother Nature—these are just a few of the challenges that we face. And that’s just the beginning of the “lessons learned at the end of a dirt road.”

So, if these lessons are so great, why would young people come back to farm and ranch?

By Billy Howe

Danny Reible’s op-ed in the Houston Chronicle on May 29 was a curious mixture of “right on target” and “Hey Danny, you’ve got to be kidding.”

First of all, agriculture is committed to efficient water use, and he is correct that a public investment in developing that technology would be very productive. However, Mr. Reible is way off the mark when he suggests agricultural irrigation, which is mostly groundwater, will be responsible for future water shortages in the high-growth areas of Texas.

By Stewart Truelsen

Here is a prediction: American farmers and ranchers will be able to feed this nation well into the future if given access to land, water, capital and scientific advances. If you’d like the prediction to be more specific, let’s say the nation’s food supply will be secure until at least the year 2061. 

There’s an excellent chance this prediction will be true, but it’s hardly the stuff books are written about. A prediction like this would only bring a yawn, and the reader would go back to worrying about dire predictions of economic collapse or the 2012 apocalypse. 

By Si Cook

I read an article last week about how Chipotle Grill is promoting the natural, organic ingredients that they use to make the majority of their menu items. “That’s nice,” I thought—until I learned the rest of the story about their marketing tactics.

It seems Chipotle has developed and launched a marketing campaign designed to drive customers to their restaurants through fear and mistrust of modern agriculture practices. They developed a folksy, animated video featuring a song by Coldplay and performed by Willie Nelson.

By Mike Barnett

The rising cost of survival is something society needs to think about as the phrase sustainable agriculture is bandied about in an increasingly bitter debate. There are many challenges as the world ponders its food future. Here’s three:

• Farming is a business.

Recent Farmer’s Share data released by the National Farmers Union shows the agriculture producer’s piece of each dollar the consumer spends on food is 19 cents. The other 81 cents goes to processing, packaging and transportation costs.