For decades, Texas led the nation in agricultural products, straight across the board. And we still lead the nation in several things. In beef cattle production, and cotton, and sheep and goat production. But now California has overtaken us and they are the leading state in total agricultural product.

The reason for that is, this office, the Commission of Agriculture, primarily by the Republicans, has been used as a training ground for upcoming political figures to make inroads up the political ladder. And by doing so, they haven't really taken care of business. It started with Rick Perry, who did absolutely nothing for agriculture.

And then Susan Combs, her big claim to fame in the eight years she has held this office, is changing the school lunch menus. Basically telling them to throw everything out that the kids like to eat and let's feed them healthy but with no educational plan to substantiate it. I mean, you can't just take things away from kids and not tell them why. And had she put an educational coefficient with that, teach them in the classroom, then it probably would have worked out a lot better instead of just wasting a bunch of food.

But the key thing is, I taught high school agriculture for thirteen years, and was an FFA instructor and advisor. One good proponent of the FFA is teaching kids to set goals, and then work toward achieving those goals.

That's exactly how California agriculture got to the number one spot in agricultural production. Because they have regular meetings, yearly meetings, with the commissioner's office and people within certain agricultural industries, whether it be the wine industry, or beef cattle, or row crops. And they are constantly looking at their short range goals, their long range goals, and where they're at that particular time as related to that goal.

When I'm elected, that's exactly what we're going to do. We are going to call people in from the beef cattle industry once a year. We are going to sit down. We're going to make some short-range goals, we're going to make some intermediate goals, five to ten years out. then we're going to make some beyond ten years. And then we are going to set some parameters about what we need to do to achieve these short-range goals to get to the long-range.
Because Texas is growing. Texas is growing by leaps and bounds with urban development. So we are losing prime agricultural land every day to concrete. So we, in order to, maintain the quality of life, the quality of agricultural products in the United States, that Texas is known for, and that this world depends upon us to produce, we have to be able to produce more with less.

We have some of the best agricultural colleges in the state, in the country. And we as a Department of Agriculture fail to utilize them to their fullest potential. And I intend to do that.
Why should people who live in an urban city be interested in Ag?

Well, Number 1, if you eat you are automatically involved in Agriculture.