A new cotton picker can cost more than $1 million. Jeff Nunley says that is only one part of a much larger problem: while most people were talking about eight-percent inflation, farmers were watching some costs climb by nearly 50 percent.
Jeff grew up on a family row-crop farm in Port Lavaca, where weather was never small talk and a bad season could change a family’s direction. During the 1996 drought, he lost his job as a junior loan officer. The setback eventually returned him to the world he understood best—but from a different position.
Today, Jeff is Executive Director of the South Texas Cotton & Grain Association. He represents producers across 33 Texas counties and translates farming realities for people writing policy in Austin and Washington.
Modern farming is both more technologically advanced and more financially exposed than most people realize.
Jeff breaks down weather, global markets, rising equipment costs, insurance, and the narrow window between a difficult season and an impossible one. The conversation also opens into food security, skilled trades, and careers in agriculture that never happen on a tractor.
What happens when the people making agricultural policy no longer understand what it takes to produce food?
Jeff’s work is to close that distance before a vote becomes a consequence. He brings the realities of 33 Texas counties into rooms where a misunderstanding can affect whether a family farm survives.
