News & Politics
August 10, 2020
Struggling Texas Farmers Thought Hemp Might Save Them. The Crop Hasn’t Yet Delivered.
A year after the Legislature legalized farming the cannabis variant, big dreams for the new crop are withering.
Farmers
Energy
January 21, 2013
Gulf Coast Portion of Keystone Pipeline Approved
TransCanada announced that construction of the Texas-Oklahoma segment of its pipeline will begin shortly—immediately prompting a backlash from environmentalists and conservative landowners alike.
January 21, 2013
Texas Farmers are Nation’s Second-Most Aged
Many Texas farmers are on the cusp of retirement, but young people don't seem eager to replace them.
Books
January 20, 2013
The Uncertain Sage
A cool, brilliantly blue day in early February found me driving north from Austin on a sort of pilgrimage. I was going to see John Graves, the writer and gentleman farmer, now 73 years old, at his place on four hundred acres of rocky blackland prairie near Glen Rose.My visit
Feature
April 30, 1997
The War for the Colorado
Battles over the river’s precious waters are pulling in everyone from pecan growers in Central Texas to shrimpers in Matagorda Bay, not to mention thirsty cities like San Antonio and Corpus Christi. Who will be left high and dry?
News & Politics
January 1, 1996
Water Grab
Why farmers and big-city folk are at war over water. Plus: Jane Nelson for comptroller?
Music
March 1, 1995
Come Dancing
When country hunk Billy Ray Cyrus his megahit “Achy Breaky Heart” in 1992, country dancing—or at least a modern version of it—returned to vogue. Cyrus’ novelty song was released with a video that showed a line dance specifically created for the song, and—in a flashback to the Urban Cowboy craze of
News & Politics
August 31, 1985
Back Roads
Skinner Brown, a 63-year-old farmer and business man, was a pillar of his small-town society until he was busted for possessing $12 million worth of marijuana.
Being Texan
April 1, 1983
Texas Primer: The Farm-to-Market Road
The last best way to see the real Texas.
Texas History
August 31, 1978
The Sons of the Pioneers
Miles from their nearest neighbors, beset by drought, debt, insects, and government, Panhandle farmers gamble everything to keep alive a tradition they can’t abandon.