Uncertainty Surrounds Texas Cotton Farmers on Capitol Hill
If there’s one thing America’s cotton farmers pray for more than rain, it’s a safety net–just like every other U.S. agricultural commodity.
If there’s one thing America’s cotton farmers pray for more than rain, it’s a safety net–just like every other U.S. agricultural commodity.
Give Texas farmers and ranchers 48 hours and they’ll answer a call from anywhere.
LUBBOCK, Texas — When email inboxes dinged in and around Lubbock last Tuesday afternoon, recipients were surprised by the new message: an invitation to a private, first-ever agriculture round table with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Aug. 11.
American agriculture is a perpetual crisis of farmers and ranchers fighting forces too big to fight alone.
A historic agriculture crisis requires debt acceleration, price drops and misguided federal policy. When it comes to naming misguided policy, it doesn’t take farmers long — especially cotton farmers — to cite “that damned Brazil deal.”
The growing and unprecedented crisis with U.S. cotton is indicative of the plight of all sectors in American production agriculture. More and more, on the turn rows of western and southern Texas, they grasp for a historical crisis by which to gauge cotton’s present situation in which the industry’s fundamentals are stressed. “The early ‘80s” is often muttered, but quickly dismissed, mainly because interest rates aren’t soaring as they were 35 years ago.
What does America intend to do about her food, fiber and farmers? This is our nation’s most looming—and least discussed—question. Rural America asks the question more directly: Why is it assumed affordable food and fiber can be provided without farmers?