More than two million feral pigs roam across Texas, from Lubbock to Houston and everywhere in between. Quite frankly, they’re beginning to act like they own the state, tearing up farmers’ fields and eating whatever they want. Not to mention the diseases they carry. It’s been estimated that feral hogs cause about $400 million in damage each year in Texas. Blame the Spanish. When explorers came here several hundred years ago, they let wild boar go in hopes that they’d be fruitful and multiply. The hogs did that and then some.

Back then, the Spanish hoped they’d come back and have something to hunt. Hunters today have an embarrassment of riches, but they must be on Terra firma if they want to fire a shot.  Now some Texas state lawmakers are considering whether it might not be better to let hunters take aim from the air. There are a limited number of people who can already do that. Farmers have to pay a pretty penny to hire these companies to clear hogs from their property. What Texas State Representative Sid Miller thought might make more sense is to allow farmers to sell the hunting rights to regular hunters—who also might like to take a shot from the air. Miller reasons that hunters would get a good outing and farmers, instead of paying money, might make some.

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For television news, Murphy’s Law is always in full effect. We go to do a story on the drought and, predictably, it rains. Unfortunately, for farmers and ranchers across Texas, what little bit of precipitation they may get this week is not going to make much of a dent in the drought they’ve been suffering for months. Ponds, or tanks as they’re called here, are bone dry. Ranchers have to truck in water for their cattle. No rain means nothing’s growing on the ground either, so ranchers must feed their cattle more hay and pellets. That’s expensive. Some have gotten creative—doing something called “burning pear.” Prickly pear cactus plants abound in parts of Central Texas. Cattle ranchers take a torch to them to burn off the stickers so cows can eat the bright green pads. The cattle don’t even wait for them to cool off. They move right in before the smoke clears. Call it cattle ranch flambé.

But cattlemen can only continue so long. Some ranchers are selling off some or all of their herds. It just doesn’t make financial sense to hang on to them. What does this mean to you? Texas is the number one producer of cattle in the nation. Over time, if fewer cattle are produced, the price of beef will shoot up.

It’s not just cattle and it’s not just Central Texas. Every single county in Texas is suffering some kind of drought. Governor Rick Perry has petitioned the federal government for help. Now is the time of year for planting. Some wheat, cotton, and other farmers are wondering—what’s the point of planting? If the crops you plant are going to die off anyway, why bother spending the money to put anything into the ground? Again, fewer crops means higher prices for consumers in the long run.

We asked some ranchers what can be done. Some joked that since our visit seemed to bring on the rain, we might consider a return trip—and soon. Otherwise, they’re asking for our prayers. Our story should run sometime next week.

As a field producer, I’d much rather be out of the office than in it. Lives from the field can be very exciting, especially when there’s breaking news involved. That said, there are some clear advantages to doing bureau liveshots. Namely: bathroom accessibility. As much as I enjoyed doing a day of lives from remote ranch land in the Oklahoma Panhandle, having to drive a half hour to the nearest bathroom was not so great. Another benefit of being in the office is working phones and computers. When we are out in the hinterlands, service can be spotty. Much of our work depends on laptops, cell phones and Blackberries, so when they’re on the fritz because of low signal strength, it can be a real aggravation. Being in the bureau ensures we stay connected.

Generally, we get into the bureau about an hour prior to when we are supposed to be ready for liveshots. Today our first availability was 0900 EST. That’s 8a.m. our time, so we needed to be here by about 7a.m. That’s another advantage of being in the bureau. In the field, you’re guaranteed a half hour drive to your liveshot location and that eats into precious sleeping time. I live five minutes from the bureau, so there’s not much of a commute.

Once in the bureau, we wait for each show to decide whether they want us. Generally, if we are live in one hour, the next hour will take a pass on us. A good day means probably means four or five liveshots, plus a taped segment either for Special Report or Fox Report.

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We hadn’t been to the border in a while and I certainly hadn’t been since the fence was finished. We came to El Paso because of violence, not violence in El Paso but just across the border in Juarez, a city of about 1.2 million people and twice the size of  El Paso. You’ve heard about the drug violence in Mexico. Juarez has been especially hard hit. More than 230 people have been killed and that’s just since the beginning of the year. People, on hearing I was going to El Paso, told me to be careful. They were well intentioned but had no reason to worry. El Paso is safe. Despite the incredible violence going on across the border, El Paso remains the third safest city of its size in the U.S.  Governor Perry was visiting to make sure it stays that way.

El Paso is an interesting city. Most places I’ve visited along the border are much smaller towns. A mountain range runs through El Paso and the city seems to merge with its neighbor to the South. At night, the twinkling lights of each are indistinguishable. People who live on one side have relatives on the other. Some work in one country and live in another. Both populations, at least until the recent violence, used to visit each other’s shops and restaurants. People who live here have lived here for generations.

The fence has become a visual reminder that the two cities are distinct. Border Patrol agents say it’s helped them do their job. We did a day of live shots at a couple of different spots along the fence. At one, right in the middle of town and hugging the Rio Grande, there was a sheet of Plexiglas where agents sometimes park. The Plexiglas is to protect the agents. You can see that it’s been shot. At another live location, we were high on a cliff near the city’s dump and across from a colonia by Juarez.  Colonias have been explained to me as squatter towns (on both sides of the border) where people just move in and build, without water or utilities. As we stood across from the colonia, kids came up to the fence and asked for money. A border agent pointed out the orphanage about a mile from the fence where the kids lived. The agent also told us that some of the same kids would toss rocks at them.

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You wouldn’t think you’d learn a lot about finance in a place like Spearman, Texas, but after our trip there recently, I came home with a lot to think about.  Spearman is a small town, maybe four thousand people, in the Panhandle region of Texas, usually hot, flat and windy. Farming and oil are big here but it was banking that drew us to the town. Agricultural banking, if you can believe it, has so far been able to escape the Sturm und Drang suffered by Wall Street. We wanted to visit a typical farming community to find out why.

A local farmer and his banker

The secret to success in the banking industry? The folks in agricultural banking say there is no secret—just common sense. Right now  it’s renewal time, a time when farmers come in with what’s basically their business plan for the next year. They meet eyeball to eyeball with their banker, the same guy they sat down with last year, probably the same guy who sat down with their father and grandfather. On the farmers end, they make their best guess as to what might happen over the next year. What will the weather do? What crops will pay the most? Farmers as a rule are conditioned to an industry that is at best as fickle as fate. One day prices are high. The next, they’re not. One day, it’s dry, the next, there’s a flood. That’s the way it goes and it’s an eventuality for which farmers are prepared. They don’t ask for the moon when they go in to their banker and they generally have something set aside for the years when times aren’t great.

As for the bankers, they look to make sure the farmers have assets and a sound plan for the next year. They look for farmers who aren’t overleveraged, don’t take too much of a living out of  their operation. When these bankers make a loan, they know it won’t be sold off to another bank so there’s a vested interest to make sure the loan is sound. After all, they’ll be seeing it through to its conclusion. These loans are the backbone of success in these agricultural and community banks. The bankers actually know their customers, see them at church. Their kids go to school together.

As one banker told us about Wall Street, “I would say we just never got as greedy as those folks.” The ag bankers aren’t redecorating their offices, certainly not for millions—and their clients aren’t trading up on their homes. As a group, the farmers and bankers didn’t get fat and happy over the last few years, but now it looks like they may not be dropping quite as low either.

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