Rain dance, anyone?
By Jessica Domel
When I was in high school, my dad often said that in the coming years our country wouldn’t fight over oil or money, we’d fight over a resource that is much more scarce and valuable–water.
I hadn’t thought about him saying that until the other day when I was visiting our family farm. My dad took me on an ATV ride through our pasture to feed the fish he’d stocked in three of our family’s tanks. When we arrived at the first tank, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
read moreTruth in rising food prices
By Amanda Hill
I keep a close eye on food prices—mostly for my own family’s budget, but also for Texas Farm Bureau’s Grocery Price Watch. I wonder, though, how many shoppers know why food prices increase.
If you watch the news, you’ve probably heard stories about how the devastating U.S. drought—a drought that caused billions of dollars in damage to Texas crops last year—will cause you to pay more at the grocery store. The stories make it seem as though you’ll shell out a whole lot more on your next shopping trip, due directly to crop shortages from parched lands.
read moreMeet a Cotton Farmer: Brandon Patschke
By Nathan Smith
Most years on the Southern High Plains of Texas, farmers like Brandon Patschke and his family are busy growing the fabric of our lives—cotton. Brandon is a Texas Farm Bureau member and grows cotton on his family farm near Lubbock.
Farmers like Brandon come from generations of families with decades of practice weathering the good and the bad. Through floods and drought, they care for the land and work together to leave the farm in better shape for the next generation. Last year, record drought and heat devastated the Texas cotton crop and pushed some farmers out of business altogether. Without rain, 2012 could be an ugly sequel. It’s years like 2011 that make me wonder why Texas farmers and ranchers do what they do. The answer is simple… because they love it.
read moreThe science of food
By Amanda Hill
Science is an amazing thing. Think about some of the advancements we’ve made in the past 100 years: new medicines have advanced the average lifespan from 49.2 years at the turn of the century to 77.5 years in 2003; cars don’t just take us from point A to point B, but they also tell us how to get there; and through complicated communications networks, we can reach our friends and family in an instant—anytime, anywhere.
read moreGrocery Price Watch: Texas food prices hold steady
By Amanda Hill
Food prices at Texas grocery stores appear to be holding steady, for now. Today, Texas Farm Bureau released its third quarter Grocery Price Watch survey, which monitors the cost of 16 staple food products across the Lone Star State. This latest survey shows Texans are paying slight more—72 cents—than they did in June for the same basket of goods.
Of the 16 food products surveyed, nine items either dropped in price or stayed the same, while seven items cost more than they did in June. Here’s a look at the full survey results:
