By Amanda Hill

Mike Barnett recently spurred a lively discussion on Texas Table Top with his open letter from a farmer to consumers. It was a welcome sight for those of us who are dedicated to this blog, hoping to connect Texans with the men and women who grow our food and fiber.

Most farmers find it amazing that people living in the city want to get to know them. Farmers and ranchers are pretty private people—they live on their family’s land and do what they grew up watching their dads and granddads do.

But you do care. You want to meet the people who grow the food you buy and serve to your families. We know you have questions, and many Texas Farm Bureau members have expressed a willingness to explain how things are done on their farms and ranches.

On Texas Table Top, we want to help make those introductions and facilitate those conversations.

Our Meet a Farmer video series is one way we do that. We’re out in the field nearly every week, and we’ve started asking the farmers and ranchers to tell us a little bit of their story. We hope you find these short videos interesting and informative.

There are lots of other ways to learn about agriculture—often from the comfort of your laptop, desktop, iPad, smartphone, etc. If you’re curious about how wheat or corn is harvested, search YouTube for “harvest” and pages of videos will appear. In fact, one of our members posted a seven-minute video of his wheat harvest set to music. As of yesterday, more than 95,000 people have watched it. There are a lot of curious folks out there.

You can also get to know Texas farmers and ranchers by engaging in discussions on Texas Farm Bureau’s Facebook page. With questions, information, photos and videos posted a few times a day, there’s hardly a lull in things to talk about.

All that to say, food is an important topic to all Texans. Let’s keep the discussion going.